Socialism versus the state

I if [J! Si

I it lit ]j

KS

-HX

304

V28sE

Vandervelds-
Socialism

versus the

Southern Branch
of the

University of California

Los Angeles

W" is DUE

This book is DUE on the last
date stamped below

Vi/»r - 0 (352

WAY 2 196^

OCT 2 4 1960

WAR 1 3 1961
IWCD

APR 6- 1961

SOUTI-

UNIVERSI1

L

lUOS A

lOm-8,'32

SOCIALISM
VERSUS THE STATE

BY

EMILE VANDERVELDE

MINISTER OF STATE I MEMBER OF THE BELGIAN GOVERNMENT

Translated by Charles H. Kerr

CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

CO-OPERATIVE

3S/&B

Copyright 1019

By Chaki.es H. Kerr & Company

Authorized Edition for all English-Speaking Countries

30<V

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface 5

Introduction 13

1. Reformist Socialism 23

2. Revolutionary Syndicalism 28

3. The Social Democracy 44

PART ONE
The Conquest of Political Power
Chapter I. The Capitalist Conquest of the

Public Powers 65

1. Action Upon the Voters 67

2. Action Upon Those Elected 85

Chapter II. The Bankruptcy of Parliamentarism 102
Chapter III. Proletarian Action 107

1. Resistance to Capitalism Ill

2. Pressure From Without 116

3. The Formation of the New System 122

4. The Proletarian Conquest of Political

Power 126

PART TWO
The Socialization of the Means of Production

Section I. Public Corporations 150

Section II. Autonomy of Public Services 159

Chapter I. Financial Autonomy 161

4 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Chapter II. Administrative Autonomy 167

1. The Administration of Mines in Prussia... 168

2. The State Railways 170

3. The Belgian National Railway Project 177

Chapter III. Autonomy of the Working Force. . 181

1. Belgium 187

2. France 189

3. England 191

4. Summary and Conclusion 194

Chapter IV. Socialism and State Industries 205

Chapter V. Socialism and Statism 220

PREFACE

This book was at the point of completion when
the war broke out. I carried the manuscript to
Anvers, then to Ostend and to Havre One of
my co-workers found it, and having read it,
advised me to publish without waiting longer.
On reflection, I have followed this advice : the
problems which concerned me in 1914 have not
ceased to be problems. On the contrary, they
will assert themselves after peace comes, with a
force multiplied a hundred-fold by the crushing
financial burdens that the war will leave behind it.

My thesis was, in substance, that we should
guard against confusing Socialism with Statism ;
that the creation of government monopolies and
State industries may often be due to causes, of a
technical or fiscal order, which have nothing to
do with labor and socialist demands ; that the
formidable growth of war and naval budgets is
perhaps the principal factor in this development
of statism ; that this growing statization would
be of a nature to involve the gravest disadvan-
tages, if it were not accompanied by correspond-
ing changes in the political organization of the

5

6 PREFACE

State and in the social organization of industries.

Now if this was true before the war, it is still
more true at present.

The whirlpool of public debt grows deeper
day by day. The after-war finances will require
in all countries the creation of new state monop-
olies. The actual needs of the conflict have placed
most of the principal industries under control of
the States. And in the public mind, it seems that
this governmental seizure of the means of pro-
duction and exchange appears more than ever
like an application and realization of socialist
principles.

Thus, in May, 1916, at the moment when the
"economic dictatorship" was inaugurated in Ger-
many by Batocki, the predecessor of Michaelis,
one might have read in the Gazette de Lausanne
the following article :

"The economic dictatorship is in itself an
event of enormous import from the social point
of view. It marks the culmination of a system
of State socialism toward which the Empire has
progressed gradually and without check since the
beginning of the war. Industrial organization
for war, followed by the creation of all the
societies for the purchase and distribution of
commodities imagined by Dr. Delbrueck, — these
have been stages in this progress toward the

PREFACE /

realization of the dream of Karl Marx, Finally,
the economic dictatorship, that is, the distribution
of food for all under the guardianship of the
State, marks the final point. It is absolute
Statism.

"And what is most remarkable is that the
complete overthrow of a capitalist organization
has been realized in a few months, by virtue of
the common will, without discussions, without
recourse to the luminaries of Parliament The
Germans are all Socialists now. Liebknecht alone
is a Socialist no longer. And that is why he is in
prison !

"The import of this concluding experience will
be tremendous in the future. As a matter of fact,
the theories which were called Utopian have fur-
nished the leaven which has saved the Empire
from an economic catastrophe, and their applica-
tion, with the Germans' well-known spirit of
organization, will not fail to be regarded by
all economists as a precious foundation for a
financial structure.

"Saved at first by stocks of goods whose exist-
ence no one, not even in Germany, suspected
(every intense economic organization, in reality,
functions only through abundant stocks) the
Empire will owe its economic safety to the appli-
cation of socialist theories."

8 PREFACE

However interesting this homage to socialism
by a newspaper which has never been regarded
as favorable to socialist theories, we could not
subscribe to it without many and various reserva-
tions.

True, such facts as the "economic dictator-
ship," the requisition of war industries, the
extension of State control to the principal
branches of social activity, furnish valuable argu-
ments to the advocates of industrial socialization ;
but between this self-styled socialism, this war
socialism, and real socialism, there is all the
difference that exists between an authoritarian
organization and a democratic organization of
the life of the members of society.

All that can be said is that on the day when it
was necessary to carry national energies to the
maximum, the system of private initiative gave
way to a system of co-ordination of social forces,
and that henceforth it may be foreseen that on
the day after the war, for financial reasons, the
number of State monopolies will increase rather
than diminish.

Try to imagine, indeed, what the budgets of all
the belligerent States will be during the coming
years.

In an article in the Neues Wiener Tageblatt of
August 4, 1917, Dr. E. L. summarizes in the

PREFACE y

following table the present financial situation of

the principal European States :

Debts of the Belligerent Nations of Europe

Quadruple Alliance and Allies

July 31, 1914 July 31, 1917

(in millions of crowns)

England 15,624 83,424

France 32,787 87,169

Russia 25,731 96,000

Italy 15,586 38,051

Roumania 1,715 2,715

Belgium 3,734 ?

Serbia 900 ?

Portugal 3,833 ?

Central Powers and Allies

Germany 5,910 74,510

Austria-Hungary 12,954 47,454

Bulgaria 1,029 5,029

Turkey 4,180 9,180

These figures, naturally, have only a relative
value. They do not, for example, take account
of the fact that the Imperial debts of Germany
and Austria-Hungary represent but a minor part
of their real debt. But the figures suffice to show
this undeniable fact, that to cover the interest on
these gigantic loans, it will be necessary to find
fiscal resources that taxes alone will surely not be
enough to furnish.

In an important pamphlet by Edgar Jaffe,
"Volkswirtschaft und Krieg," ' issued in 1915, the

1 Tubingen, Mohr, 1915. See especially pages 6, 24, 25, 26.

10 PREFACE

author already insisted on this inevitable conse-
quence of a financial effort which far surpasses
all that the boldest minds would have dared con-
ceive at the outbreak of hostilities.

Proud as was the strength of Germany, Jaffe
labored under no illusions as to the future, and
recognized that the difficulties his country would
. have to overcome on the commercial and indus-
trial field would be as nothing to those it would
meet on the financial field.

Now, he adds, we can not expect everything
from a direct tax. It will be necessary to con-
sider the national interest alone and not attempt
to satisfy private interests. It will be necessary
to obtain resources by establishing State monop-
olies. From experiences gathered before the war,
postoffice, Imperial Bank, railroads, co-operatives
of consumption, etc., it may be concluded that
monopolies are possible and lucrative The State
would retain the total of the profits. -Commerce
in cereals, wool, copper, etc., would be financed
by public or semi-official organizations. The
State would keep a monopoly of the electrical
industry and of electric power.

That other countries, foremost among them
Great Britain, are from now on as boldly or more
boldly than Germany on the road toward "statiza-
tion" is doubted by no one, and least of all by the

PREFACE 1 1

thousands who are moved by this tendency to the
most resistance and apprehension.

Certainly, a part of the war collectivism will
disappear with the war. But, apart from the
State monopolies which will be maintained, others
must be created. State control will be established
more and more over the combines, the pools and
the trusts of big business. Industries operated
by State bureaux will grow in number. And by
the fact of their development, more imperiously
than ever will arise the problems which we have
studied in this book and which are summed up
in its title : Socialism Versus the State, that is to
say the substitution of Socialism, founded on the
management, the administration of things, for
Statism, founded on authority, on the government
of men.

The war will have as its inevitable consequence
an inordinate increase in the domain of Statism.
But this very development will at the same time
render both easier and more necessary the de-
velopment of its opposite, Socialism.

E V.

INTRODUCTION

Every one knows, or at least has heard of,
Spencer's little book "The Man versus the State."

I had in mind this title, invented to fight
Socialism, when I called these talks "Socialism
versus the State."

At this time when, by the fact of war or of
the financial burdens resulting from war, the
State is grasping more and more of the great
industries, it is more important than ever to react
against the too general tendency, not escaped by
some Socialists, to confuse socialism with statism,
to see in the progress of s^atization so many
partial victories of collectivism, to imagine that
to assure the future of socialism it will suffice
to push to their final consequences the develop-
ment of municipal ownership and of State
monopolies.

It is this manner of observing, too prevalent,
which in many minds creates deep-seated preju-
dices against the socialist ideal.

How many people, for example, never having
made any thorough study of socialism, take for a
portrait of socialism this caricature in which

13

¥

14 INTRODUCTION

Flaubert describes the psychology of Senecal,
revolutionary propagandist and future police

spy :

He had built up an ideal of virtuous democracy
having the double aspect of a small farm and a
spinning-mill, a sort of American Sparta .where the
individual existed merely to serve a society more omnip-
otent, absolute, infallible and divine than the great
Lamas and the Nebuchadnezzars.

Even in the scientific world, moreover, such
ideas are still in repute. In proof of this, one
only need open the treatise on political economy
by Leroy-Beaulieu ; he will find the following
definition of socialism:

A system which resorts to State compulsion, com-
pulsion by regulation or compulsion^ by taxation, to
introduce among men a less inequality of conditions
than that which is produced spontaneously under the
regime of pure freedom of contract.

Again, he says:

Moreover the isolated individual and family today
become parts of a multitude of voluntary and free
combinations: different associations with different ob-
jects, intellectual, moral, material, pecuniary.

In a socialist system where the State would provide
for all production, would take it upon itself to assuage
all miseries and to enlighten all men, the individual
would no longer have to enter into any of these
beneficent and varied relations. Emancipated from
particular duties to others, deprived of all initiative in
presence of the all-powerful and all-providing State,
he would be, more than today, a grain of human dust

Thus for bourgeois political economy, socialism
and statism are almost synonymous : socialism is

INTRODUCTION

15

statism ending in the absorption by the State, not
only of every individuality, but also of every
autonomous or independent collectivity.

But if we now address ourselves to socialists,
and especially to the two theorists, Engels and
Marx, who have exercised a preponderant influ-
ence on the doctrinal development of contempo-
rary socialism, on the elaboration of the declara-
tions of principles and program of the parties
affiliated with the International, the response will
be altogether different.

For the Marxists, in fact, socialism, far from
being confused with statism, is its opposite. Jts
final aim is not the omnipotence of the State, but
on the contrary its abolition.

In his book "The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State," published in 1884, where
Engels, doing what death had prevented Marx
himself from doing, sums up in a popular treatise
the results of their common researches, he says :

The State, then, did not exist from all eternity.
There have been societies without it, that had no idea
of any State or public power. At a certain stage of
economic development, which was of necessity accom-
panied by a division of society into classes, the State
became the inevitable result of this division. We are
now rapidly approaching a stage of evolution in produc-
tion, in which the existence of classes has not only
ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive fetter
on production. Hence these classes must fall as inevit-

16 INTRODUCTION

ably as they once rose. The State must irrevocably fall
with them. The society that is to reorganize production
on the basis of a free and equal association of the
producers, will transfer the machinery of State where
it will then belong: into the Museum of Antiquities by
the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.

The clearness of this passage leaves nothing to
be desired : socialism, as the masters of the theory
explain it, is then not statist, but on the contrary,
anti-statist.

How comes it, then, that the popular notion
of socialism could be the exact opposite of what
its principal theorists teach?

To understand this, it is indispensable to carry
to its completion the thought of Marx and Engels
by comparing the text just quoted with other
passages from their writings, which relate not
to the final goal of socialism, but to the means
for arriving at that goal. It will then be seen
that if they desire, when socialism shall have
triumphed, to "transfer the machinery of State
to the Museum of Antiquities." they wish that
the workers grasp this machine, and before dis-
carding it, make it operate to their profit.

This is found clearly explained in the follow-
ing passages of the Communist Manifesto:

The immediate aim of the Communists (we should
say today Marxians) is the same as that of all the
other proletarian parties; formation of the proletariat
into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy,

A

INTRODUCTION 17

conquest of political power by the proletariat. (Page
30, Kerr edition.)

And again farther on :

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolu-
tion by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to
the position of ruling class, to win the battle of
democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to
wrest, by degrees, all capital from the ^bourgeoisie, to
centralize all instruments of production ijn the handsof
the State, i. e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling
class; and to increase the total of productive forces as
rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected
except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of
property, and on the conditions of bourgeois produc-
tion; by means of measures, therefore, which appear
economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the
course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate
further inroads upon the old social order, and are
unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the
mode of production.

These measures will of course be different in different
countries.

Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the
following will be pretty generally applicable :

1. Abolition of property in land and application of
all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and
rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State,
by means of a national bank with State capital and an
exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and
transport in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of produc-
tion owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation

18 INTRODUCTION

of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil gen-
erally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of
industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing
industries ; gradual abolition of the distinction between
town and country, by a more equable distribution of
population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools.
Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form.
Combination of education with industrial production,
etc., etc.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions
have disappeared, and all production has been concen-
trated in the hands of a vast association of the whole
nation, the public power will lose its political character.
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organ-
ized power of one class for oppressing another. If the
proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is
compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize
itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes
itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by
force the old conditions of production, then it will,
along with these conditions, have swept away the con-
ditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of
classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its
own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes
and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in
which the free development of each is the condition for
the free development of all. (Kerr edition, pp. 40-42.)

We are now in a position to understand how
socialism may be considered as statist or anti-
statist, according to whether one has in view its
immediate goal or its final goal. The thought of
Marx and Engels may be summed up as follows :

INTRODUCTION 19

1. The State, taken in the sense of State-
power, of State-government, of the State as
organ of authority, — is a product of society
arrived at a definite degree of development. "In
order that these contradictions, these classes with
conflicting economic interests, may not annihilate
themselves and society in a useless struggle, a
power becomes necessary that stands apparently
above society and has the function of keeping
down the conflicts and maintaining 'order.' And
this power, this outgrowth of society, but assum-
ing supremacy over it and becoming more and
more divorced from it, is the State." (Origin of
the Family, p. 206.)

2. The State, born of the need for restraining
class antagonisms, but also born in the midst of
the class struggle, is, as a rule, the State of the
most powerful class, of that one which rules
economically, and which, by means of the State,
becomes also the preponderant class from the
political point of view.

3. The immediate aim of the proletarian revo-
lution is the conquest of the State, the capture of
political power.

4. The proletariat will use this political su-
premacy to wrest little by little from the bour-
geoisie all the capital, to centralize in the hands
of the State, that is to say of the proletariat

*)

20 INTRODUCTION

constituted as a directing class, the instruments
of production. (Communist Manifesto.)

5. As it will thus have suppressed the very
conditions which lead to class antagonisms, the
existence of classes, it will take away from its
own supremacy the character of class supremacy :
the State, as organ of authority, may disappear;
for the old capitalist society with its classes and
its class antagonisms will be substituted an asso-
ciation in which the free development of each
will be the condition for the free development
of all.

It will be seen that, in this conception, the
word "State" is employed stricto scnsu: the ques-
tion is not of the administration of things, but of
the government of men ; not of the State as an
organ of management, but solely of the State as
an organ of authority.

This is the State which we seek to conquer in
order to abolish it, following the clear formula
which Kautsky gives in his commentary on the
Erfurt Program :

"Democracy would have the working classes
conquer political power, in order, by aid of it, to
transform the State into a great economic co-
operative."

The ideas of Marx and Engels on the conquest
of political power re-appear today with more or

INTRODUCTION 21

less clearness and precision in the programs of
all the parties affiliated with the International.

Moreover, the International admitted to its
congresses, according to the decisions taken at the
Congress of London (1896) and Paris (1900)
only associations and labor organizations answer-
ing to the following conditions:

1. All associations which adhere to the essen-
tial principles of socialism: centralization of the
means of production and exchange ; union and
international action of the workers ; socialist con-
quest of the public powers by the proletariat
organized as a class party.

2. All labor organizations which, placing
themselves on the field of the class struggle and
recognizing in their declarations the necessity of
political action, namely legislative and parliamen-
tary, do not participate directly in the political
movement.

These decisions at London and Paris had for
their aim and their result the exclusion, on the
right wing and on the left wing, of associations
or organizations which, while taking the name of
socialism, did not accept the fundamental ideas
which have just been explained on the subject of
the conquest of the State, of political power, by
the proletariat organized as a class party.

On one side there were, in France, the Inde-

t

22 INTRODUCTION

pendent Socialists, in Italy, the "Reformists of
the Right," in England the "Labor "Men." liberals,
like John Burns, who, while declaring for the
socialization or at least statization and municipal-
ization of certain means of production and ex-
change, opposed, either in theory or in practice,
the collaboration of the working classes in the
class struggle.

On the other side there were the anarchists,
the libertarians, the anti-parliamentary syndical-
ists who, while placing themselves on the field
of the class struggle, and striving for the social-
ization of the means of production and exchange,
did not recognize the necessity of political action,
of the "socialist conquest of the public powers
by the proletariat organized as a class party."

There were, in short, before the war. three
principal tendencies in the labor movement: re-
formist socialism, revolutionary syndicalism and
social democracy.

These three tendencies, from the theoretical
point of view, are connected more or less with
Marx and Engels, but the first two are deviations
which lead, on one side to a sort of socialist
radicalism and on the other side to anarchism;
the third, on the contrary, is a development of
the Marxian thought, and at the same time an
adaptation of it to the modifications which half

INTRODUCTION 23

a century has produced in the social environment.

We propose to characterize these three tend-
encies, especially from the standpoint of their
conception of the role and the nature of the
State.

I. Reformist Socialism

Inside the organization of the labor and social-
ist International as it existed on the eve of the
war, were found groups like the "Reformists of
the Left" in Italy, the "Revolutionists" in Ger-
many, the "Fabians" in England, the right wing
of the unified socialist party in France, which
were connected, more or less, with reformist
socialism.

But among the individuals belonging to these
various groups and factions, or among these
groups and factions themselves, there is such a
diversity of shadings that any attempt to char-
acterize their common ideas would inevitably
raise numerous objections on their part.

In France, for example, the most reformist
among the members of the unified socialist party
might and even ought to protest against this
epithet of reformists, in view of the fact that the
common declaration which stands as the basis of
the Socialist Unity asserts that "by its aim, its
ideal, the methods it employs, the socialist party,
while pursuing the realization of immediate re-

24 INTRODUCTION

forms demanded by the working class, is not a
party of reforms, but a party of the class struggle
and revolution."

To find reformist socialism one must either go
beyond the frontier of the party, or else revert to
an epoch preceding the Unity (of French social-
ists), to the time when, in his celebrated speech
at Saint-Mande, Alexandre Millerand formulated
in these terms the three essential points, "neces-
sary and sufficient" according to him, to char-
acterize a socialist program:

1. State intervention to transfer from the capitalist
domain to the national domain the various categories of
means of production and exchange, as fast as they
become ripe for social appropriation.

2. Conquest of the public powers by universal
suffrage.

3. International alliance of the workers.

With a little less precision or inclusiveness in
terms, these "three essential points" correspond,
in short, to the "essential principles of socialism"
to which one must adhere in order to be admitted
into the congresses of the International.

But while affirming the need of the interna-
tional alliance of the workers, Millerand protested
his patriotism in terms which already seemed to
announce his future nationalism, and on the other
hand, upon the two other essential points, he de-
veloped ideas very different from those explained

INTRODUCTION

25

in the Communist Manifesto or the other writings
of Marx and Engels.

i. Social Appropriation
Here, to start with, is Millerand's idea of col-
lectivism :

He is not a socialist, in my opinion, who does not
accept the necessary and progressive substitution of
social property for capitalist property.

That is to say that a socialist would not limit his
action to those three categories of production and
exchange which may be called classic: credit or bank-
ing, railway transportation and mining.

Thus, outside of these, take an example about which
there can be no question, an industry which is incon-
testably ripe for social appropriation at the present
time, because, monopolized in a few hands, returning
enormous profits to its exploiters, it is altogether suited
to furnish a fertile field for social exploitation. I refer
to the sugar refineries.

That is one example, and only an example: but is
there in truth any great novelty in this national admin-
istration which tomorrow shall restore to all the profit
unduly monopolized by a few ; that already ... by
assuming control of water works, electric power, the
local transportation systems, and the service in common
of farm machinery, a number of small collectivities,
urban and rural, have in their sphere substituted social
property for capitalist property?1

It will be seen that in M. Millerand's concep-
tion, the substitution of social property for capi-
talist property was, in reality, the establishment
of a certain number of government bureaux, the

1 Le Socialisme r^formiste, p. 27.

26 INTRODUCTION

statization or municipalization of a few which
already, as a matter of fact, constituted
monopolies.

In the quotation we have just made from his
speech, we find in substance the theory of the
"socialization of monopolies" which Benoit Malon
had set forth in his book on "Integral Socialism,"
the second volume of which appeared in 1891.

Reforms of this kind, moreover, are merely
the realization, partial at least, of the program
of immediate action which Marx and Engels were
already developing in 1848.

But the authors of the Manifesto saw in this
program only the starting point for more radi-
cal transformations. Measures will have to be
taken, they said (Manifesto, p. 41), "which ap-
pear economically insufficient and untenable, but
which in the course of the movement outstrip
themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the
old social order, and are unavoidable as a means
,of entirely revolutionizing the mode of produc-
tion."

For Malon and Millerand, on the contrary, the
transformation of private monopolies into pro-
ductive services constitutes not a means, but an
end. They see in it nothing less than the culmi-
nation of socialist effort so far as property is
concerned.

INTRODUCTION 27

2. Conquest of Public Powers

For Marx and Engels, the measures of which
we have just spoken were to be taken by the
proletariat, having become a ruling class, after
conquering the public power (Manifesto, p. 41).

For Malon and Millerand, on the contrary, the
socialization of monopolies can and must take
place beginning now; it must be accomplished
gradually, progressively, by way of purchase, as
must also be effected gradually, progressively the
conquest of public powers through universal
suffrage.

That is what Millerand, in his speech at Saint-
Mande, affirmed in the most categorical terms,
protesting energetically against the "ridiculous
reproach" of expecting the triumph of his ideas
from violent revolution :

"Resort to force, and for whom, and against whom?
Republicans before all else, we do not entertain the
crazy idea of appealing to the illusory prestige of a
pretender or the sabre of a dictator to make our doc-
trine triumph. . . . No, to realize immediate re-
forms, capable of alleviating the lot of the working
class and thus making it more fit to conquer its own
emancipation, to begin, under conditions determined by
the nature of things, the socialization of the means of
production, it is necessary and sufficient for the socialist
party to pursue through universal suffrage the conquest
of the public powers.1

1 Le Socialisme r6f ormiste francais, p. 32.

28 INTRODUCTION

The socialism thus understood is evidently a
State socialism, answering to the general defini-
tion of socialism given by Leroy-Beaulieu. It
strives to conquer the State, not to abolish it, but
on the contrary to extend its domain, entrust new
funcions to it, so as to assure its grasp on all
monopolies, natural or artificial.

2. Revolutionary Syndicalism

The whole doctrine of revolutionary syndical-
ism will be found in embryo in the article on
the new society which Sorel published, in 1898,
under the title "The Socialist Future of the Syn-
dicats" (industrial unions).

Before this, it should be understood, there were
in France syndicalists more or less hostile to
parliamentary action, and who advocated, in op-
position to the militants of the Parti Ouvrier,
founded by Guesde and La f argue, theories or
tactics which connected them, consciously or un-
consciously, with Proudhon or Bakounin.1

But Sorel's originality was in representing syn-
dicalism as a logical deduction from the Marxian
conception itself. His conclusion on this point is
worth quoting entire :

This study furnishes us with a beautiful illustration
of the doctrines of Marx : the leaders of the syndicalist

1 See on this subject the study by Lagardelle on the origins
of syndicalism in France in the Mouvement Socialiste. Nov.-
Dec, 1909.

INTRODUCTION 29

movement did not know his theories and, oftener than
not, had only confused notions of historical materialism.
Their tactics may have been sometimes open to criticism,
because they were doing pioneer work, with no one to
advise them. Today, things are sufficiently advanced so
that we may take account of the role which the syndi-
cats are called upon to play.

We see today very clearly that the proletariat can
emancipate itself from all exploitation only by estab-
lishing itself on the model of the old social classes,
taking lessons from the bourgeoisie as that class for-
merly took lessons from the nobility, by adapting the
old political formulas to its new needs, and by conquer-
ing the public powers in order to appropriate the profit
from them as the capitalist class has done in all
countries.

If, as Marx says, the proletarians can not lay hold
of the forces of social production without abolishing
the "mode of appropriation in force up to our time,"
how can one admit that they can preserve the quintes-
sence of the capitalist mode of appropriation, that is to
say, the forms of the traditional government? Such a
conclusion would be the negation of the whole of
historical materialism. Finally, how could the differen-
tiation of governed and governors disappear, if there
did not exist in society forces, long ago developed,
capable of preventing the return of the past?

As it confronts the State, the action of the pro-
letariat is two-fold : it must struggle within the present
relations of the political organization, to obtain social
legislation favorable to its development; it must use
whatever influence it acquires either in public opinion
or in the government, to destroy the present relation-
ships of the political organization, to strip the State
and the municipality, one by one, of all their attributes,
thereby to enrich the proletarian organisms in process
of formation, namely, the syndicats (industrial
unions).

30 INTRODUCTION

The proletariat must aim to emancipate itself hence-
forth from all outside authority; it is by movement and
action that it must acquire legal and political capacity.
The first rule of its conduct must be to "remain exclu-
sively working-class," that is, to exclude the intellec-
tuals, whose leadership would result in restoring the
hierarchies and dividing the army of toilers. The role
of the intellectuals is an auxiliary role; they may serve
as employees of the unions ; they have no qualification
for leadership, now that the proletariat has begun to
be conscious of its reality and to establish its own
organization.

The development of the proletariat makes possible a
powerful moral discipline exercised over its members:
this can be exercised by its unions, which are destined
to wipe out all forms of organization bequeathed by
the bourgeoisie.

To sum up my whole thought in one formula, I will
say that the whole future of socialism is contained in
the free development of the industrial unions.

It will be seen that at this moment Sorel did
not declare against all political action. Neither
did he profess the contempt that he proclaimed
later in his "Introduction to Modern Economics"
for co-operative action. He admitted on the con-
trary that, even if the co-operatives did nothing
but make life less hard for the workers, even this
would be an enormous result. Experience had
already shown to Young that the best paid
workers were the most inclined to resistance;
all writers are today unanimous in recognizing
that poverty is a great obstacle to the progress of
socialism, but, they add, the co-operative has

INTRODUCTION 31

one effect still more direct, in that it takes the
worker away from the influence of the shop-
keeper, that great elector of bourgeois democracy ;
this is no small result.

However, according to Sorel, it is for the
unions to preserve the proletarian spirit in the
co-operatives, to prevent their growing into mere
business concerns, and to eliminate from them
whatever savors of the capitalist corporation.
And again, it is on the unions, on the direct action
of the unions, that he counts for obtaining from
the legislator, not laws of protection and guar-
dianship, but facilities for proceeding with the
transformation of the nation by itself.

Thus for example:

1. Many people think that the employment
agencies ought to be municipalized, but the
unions have well understood that if they could
obtain control of these agencies, this conquest
would be of great importance for them, not only
because of the authority they would have over
the workers of each trade, but especially because
they would have wrested from the traditional
authority a scrap of its power.

2. A few years ago, miners' delegates were in-
troduced to supplement the insufficiency of gov-
ernment supervision ; in selecting them the old
democratic tradition was followed, leaving the

32 INTRODUCTION

unions side-tracked. So again when it was neces-
sary to organize pensions and sickness and acci-
dent benefits. As a matter of fact, the unions
strive to conquer this power of supervision in-
directly, by contesting the elections ; when they
shall have acquired it in a general and indirect
manner, the legislator will be forced to recog-
nize them and to suppress the fiction of a useless
vote.

3. Every one complains of the excessive super-
vision exercised over factories ; the inspectors are
too numerous, and their good will (when they
have any) is nullified by administrative inertia or
even repressed by the public powers. The solu-
tion of the radicals is very simple : to multiply
functionaries so as to furnish jobs to the intel-
lectuals who are out of work. The socialist solu-
tion is even simpler and more economical : to
assign the duty of inspection to the unions ; thus
it would be assured that this would be serious
and practical.

4. Finally, it is not evident that the unions
would be much more capable than municipal em-
ployes to take care of questions of relief? There
again their intervention would be more efficient
and less costly than that of the established bodies.

To sum up then, in Sorel's view, unionist action
in the political field should not have for its aim to

INTRODUCTION 33

conquer the State in order to abolish it later, but
to work from now on for its final abolition, by
substituting union action for state action :

It is necessary that the unions strip the State of its
powers, little by little, by demanding them incessantly,
by interesting the public in their efforts, by denouncing
abuses without respite, by showing the incompetence or
the dishonesty of the public administrations. They will
thus eventually take away from the old forms, pre-
served by the democrats, everything vital in them, and
leave them nothing but the repulsive functions of police
repression. Then a new society will have been created,
with elements completely new, with principles purely
proletarian. The societies of resistance will have ended
by enlarging their field of action to such a degree that
they will have absorbed nearly everything political.

That, as I understand it, according to the material-
istic conception of history, is the final struggle for the
public powers. It is not a struggle to capture the
positions held by the bourgeois and to deck ourselves
out in their spoils; it is a struggle to empty the bour-
geois political organism of all life, and to transfer
everything useful contained by it into a proletarian
political organism, created as fast as the proletariat
develops.

This study by Sorel, at the time of its publica-
tion, received scarcely any notice.

The C. G. T. (General Confederation of Labor)
created in 1895, numbered few adherents and had
not yet clearly defined its syndicalist tendencies.

The Federation of Labor Exchanges, headed
by Fernand Pelloutier, remained the head and
the heart of the syndicalist movement. Like the

34 INTRODUCTION

C. G. T., it aimed to co-ordinate wcrking-class
action outside the socialist groups, and to unite
the workers on the economic field in the struggle
for their complete emancipation.

But, while affirming the theoretical necessity of
a rupture between the bourgeois State and the
organized labor movement, the Federation re-
mained practically incorporated into the State
which it pretended to combat, by the fact that it
accepted the subsidy from the government as its
normal means of existence.

Before the syndicalist tendencies, outlined in
theory by Sorel, could take shape in a powerful
organization, a crisis was needed, and this was
produced in the socialist and labor circles in 1900,
when M. Millerand, at that time one of the leaders
of parliamentary socialism, accepted a portfolio
in the Waldeck-Rousseau-Gallifet ministry.

As Griffuelhes pointed out at the C. G. T. Con-
gress six years later, it was to react against the
reformism of the parliamentary socialists that a
coalition of anarchists, Guesdists, Blanquists,
Allemanists and various other elements was
formed, to isolate the unions from the govern-
ment. This coalition succeeded in maintaining
itself, and was the life of the C. G. T.

At its origin then, the syndicalist movement
was nothing else than a protest against Millerand-

INTRODUCTION 35

ism and against government attempts at the
domestication of the trade unions.

While the majority of the socialist party ap-
proved the policy of M. Millerand and accorded
its parliamentary support, the advanced elements
of the unions took an attitude more and more
hostile, both toward the minister and toward the
socialists who supported him.

But little by little this mistrust of a definite
kind of politics took on a character of hostility
or at least indifference, towards all politics in
general, and in 1906, at the syndicalist Congress
of Amiens, an enormous majority declared in
favor of a motion proclaiming the absolute sepa-
ration of the political movement and the syn-
dicalist movement.

True, the Congress asserted for each member
of a union "entire liberty to participate, outside
his co-operative group, in such forms of struggle
as correspond to his philosophical and political
condition," but he was requested not .to introduce
into the union the opinions that he professed out-
side. It was proclaimed that the federated organ-
izations should not, as unions, concern themselves
with parties or sects. On the other hand, a clearly
anti-capitalist viewpoint was adopted. They took
their stand on the field of the class struggle, pro-
claiming that the mission of syndicalism is to pre-

36 INTRODUCTION

pare for the complete emancipation of the prole-
tariat, which can only be realized by the expro-
priation of the capitalists ; they advocated the
general strike as a means of action, and held that
the union, today a group for resistance, will be
tomorrow a group for production and distribu-
tion, a basis for social reorganization.

But, in fact, the motion passed at Amiens gave
to the libertarian or syndicalist elements, which
already dominated the C. G. T., full license to pur-
sue their advantage and consolidate their control.

Thus, less than six years after the publication
of Sorel's pamphlet, his ruling ideas had become
the official doctrine of the C. G. T.

To become convinced of this, one need only
read in the library of the Mouvement Socialists,
published by Lagardelle, the pamphlets published
in 1907-1908 under the following titles :

I. Syndicalisme et Socialisme, by Lagardelle, La-
briola, Michels, Kritchewsky, Griffuelhes.

II. La Confederation generate du Travail, by Pouget.

III. La Decomposition du Marxisme, by Sorel.

IV. L'Action syndicaliste, by Griffuelhes.

V. Le Parti socialiste et la C. G. T., a discussion by
Jules Guesde, Lagardelle, Vaillant.

In the pamphlet by Pouget, for example, we

find this very clear affirmation, that the working

class, in giving itself an independent organization,

meant "to establish itself as a class party, in op-

INTRODUCTION 37

position to all other parties and in opposition to
all other classes."

The goal which it seeks is to "realize and to
fortify groups fit to accomplish the expropriation
of the capitalists and capable of proceeding to a
social reorganization on the communist plan."
(Page 3.)

To arrive at these ends, the "federal union is
accomplished outside all political schools, which
are all — even those which connect themselves with
doctrines of social transformation — nothing but
a prolongation of democracy." (Page 25.)

The C. G. T., on the other hand, makes a
complete break between present society and the
working class. It does not abdicate before any
social problem, not even politics, using that word
in its broad sense. What distinguishes it from
the democratic parties, is that it does not partici-
pate in parliamentary life ; it is non-parliamentary ,
as it is non-religious, and also as it is non-
patriotic.

But its indifference to parliamentary matters
does not prevent it from reacting against the
government, and experience has proved the
efficacy of its action exerted against the public
powers by exterior pressure. (Page 28.)

As for tactics, these are pretty nearly the op-

38 INTRODUCTION

posite of the tactics followed by the democratic

parties, socialists included.

1. The democratic parties strive to win the

majority. The C. G. T., on the contrary, counts

most of all on the action of the minority :

If the democratic mechanism were practiced in labor
organizations, the non-will of the unthinking and non-
syndicalist majority would paralyze all action. But the
minority is not disposed to abdicate its demands and
its aspirations before the inertia of a mass not yet
animated and vivified with the spirit of revolt. Conse-
quently there exists for the conscious minority an
obligation to act without taking account of the retard-
ing mass, under penalty of being forced to bend the
spine like the unthinking ones. (Page 35.)

The democratic parties count on their dele-
gates in political assemblies. The C. G. T., on the
other hand, practices direct action, that is to say,
syndicalist action, free from all alloy, without
capitalistic or governmental compromise, without
intrusion into the debate of "persons interposed."
(Page 37.)

This direct action, morover. is not necessarily
violent : it may appear under aspects benevolent
and pacific or very vigorous and even violent,
without ceasing to be, in either case, direct action.

Again, it is various in its modalities, according
to whether the attack is more expressly directed
against the capitalists or against the State.
Against the latter, direct action materializes itself

INTRODUCTION 39

under form of external pressure, while against
the employer, the common methods are the strike,
boycott and sabotage.

3. Finally, the democratic parties, the socialist
parties included, wish to grasp political power,
and among the means for arriving at that solu-
tion, include parliamentary action. The C. G. T.,
on the contrary, does not conduct its struggle
against the government on the parliamentary

field:

'And that because syndicalism does not look to a
simple modification of the governmental personnel, but
rather to a reduction of the State to zero, by trans-
planting into the syndicalist organs the few useful
functions which keep up the illusion of the value of
government, and by suppressing the others purely and
simply. (Page 45.)

And the method of action which will permit
the working class to carry through this work —
that of general emancipation — is the logical cul-
mination of its grouping on the economic field and
of the conceptions arising from this. It has its
expression in the idea of the general strike :

The general strike is the material break between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie, preceded by the moral
and ideological break involved in the affirmation of the
autonomy of the working class. This class, after having
proclaimed that it bears within itself all the real ele-
ments of social life, having acquired the vigor and the
consciousness necessary to impose its will, will proceed
to action, by refusing to produce for the capitalist class,
and this decisive revolt will be the general strike.

40 INTRODUCTION

This refusal to continue production on the capi-
talist plan will not be purely negative : it will
coincide with the seizure of the social machinery
and a reorganization on the communist plan ac-
complished by the social assemblies which the
unions constitute. The syndicalist organisms,
grown into the hearthstones of the new life, will
break up and replace the hearthstones of the old
life constituted by the State and the munici-
palities :

Thenceforth, the centers of cohesion will be the
federations of industries, in the syndicalist unions, and
to these organisms will revert the few useful functions
that today devolve upon the public powers and the
municipalities. (Page 48.)

As we said just now, there is nothing in this
pamphlet of Pouget that is not a logical deduction
from the premises of Sorel in "The Socialist
Future of the Unions."

But while Sorel, in 1898, still maintained that
his revolutionary syndicalism was nothing but
the development of the anti-statist conceptions of
Marxism, Pouget, an old-time anarchist, endeav-
ors on the contrary to differentiate as clearly as
possible revolutionary syndicalism from demo-
cratic socialism.

Perhaps in Griffuelhes, who has passed through
socialism, or in Lagardelle, who has never ceased
to be a member of the socialist party, the break

INTRODUCTION 41

is not quite so clear. Nevertheless, the funda-
mental conception remains the same. Griffuelhes,
like Pouget, sees in syndicalism the "reaction of
the unions against democracy." And, on his side,
Lagardelle, at the socialist Congress of Nancy
(August 11-15, 1907) criticizes sharply the
Marxian conception, re-stated by Guesde, of the
conquest of political power :

Hubert Lagardelle. — There are two ways of conceiv-
ing this seizure of the State. The first, which is that
of the reformist socialists, is the fragmentary and pro-
gressive method. It consists in saying : The day when
we shall be one-half plus one in Parliament, when the
majority of the districts shall be represented by a
majority of socialist deputies; or again the day when,
after having participated in various governments, we
shall be able to constitute a government by ourselves, —
on that day we shall bring about, through legislation,
the social transformation.

Jules Guesde. — That is not my theory.

Hubert Lagardelle. — Then here is your theory, your
universal and revolutionary method, which says : Let
us conquer the State by a sudden attack, and once
masters of its power, we shall impose the "impersonal
dictatorship of the proletariat," we shall socialize the
means of production and exchange, we shall decree the
social revolution.

I say that these two conceptions are equally Utopian
because they give the coercive power of the State a
creative value which it does not possess. Whether you
operate according to the reformist fashion or accord-
ing to the revolutionary fashion, whether you become
the half-plus-one in the Chamber or whether you have
taken the government by assault, you will not cause a
completely constructed society to arise from one day to

42 INTRODUCTION

the next. No matter what authority you have at your
disposal, you will not give to the workers who vote for
socialist candidates, or to the electors who for motives
sometimes futile and intangible give you their support,
the capacity to direct production and exchange. You
will be the masters of the hour, you will wield all the
power which yesterday belonged to the bourgeoisie, you
will pile decree upon decree and law upon law, but you
will work no miracle, and no blow you can strike will
make the workers competent to replace the capitalists
In what, tell me, will the possession of power by certain
men called political socialists have transformed the
psychology of the masses, modified their sentiments,
increased their aptitudes, created new rules of life, and
made way for a society of free men to exist in place of
a society of masters and slaves?

No, the transformation of the world does not depend
on a simple change in governmental personnel. That
would truly be too easy, and the march of history has
other requirements. A social State is not born without
long preparation, and it is here that syndicalism, with
a more realistic conception of things, opposes to you
what I call the socialism of institutions. It reminds the
workers that no change will be possible until they shall
have created with their own hands a complete mass
of institutions destined to replace the institutions of the
capitalists.

Such are, in short, the principal theses of revo-
lutionary syndicalism.

It cannot be denied that they contain, at the
very least, a kernel of truth.

By reacting against the tendencies of certain
socialist parties toward too much politics, by
showing that socialism should not devote itself too
exclusively to the conquest of political power, by

INTRODUCTION 43

insisting on the pre-eminent value of union ac-
tivity, and by putting the working class on guard
against the temptation of acting only through
delegates, syndicalism has certainly done a useful
work and has contributed in large measure, not
to the decomposition of Marxism, but on the con-
trary, to a more exact comprehension of the fund-
amental ideas of Marxism.

Only, the syndicalists would be the first to pro-
test, if we were to pretend to see in their doctrine
merely a return to Marx, or even a simple re-
vision— revision in the revolutionary sense — of
Marxism.

When Sorel, in "L'Avenir Socialiste des Syn-
dicats," wrote that the action of the proletariat
confronting the State should be two-fold: to
struggle to obtain social legislation favorable to
its development ; to use whatever influence it
acquires "to strip the municipality and the State,
one by one, of all their attributes, thereby to
enrich the proletarian organisms in process of
formation, namely, the industrial unions," his
syndicalism practically repeats or comes near re-
peating what Marx and Engels had said long ago.

But he is already separating from them when
he maintains that "the whole future of socialism
dwells in the autonomous development of the
industrial unions." And soon we shall find our-

44 INTRODUCTION

selves very far from Marxism, when Pouget,
Griffuelhes, Merrheim, pretend to reduce all pro-
letarian action to syndicalist action alone, when
they proclaim under all circumstances their con-
tempt for the parliamentarians and politicians of
the socialist parties, when they affirm their exclu-
sive confidence in the action of conscious minori-
ties, when they ridicule large memberships and
high dues, when they oppose to the reformist or
revolutionary idea of conquest of political power
the idea of the general strike as the sole means
of accomplishing the expropriation of the capi-
talists and of proceeding to social reorganization
on the communist plan.

At this stage of development, the syndicalist
doctrine has, so to speak, no longer anything in
common with the conceptions of Marx and
Engels. It borrows its principal elements from
other sources. It has been profoundly influenced
by libertarian theories. It sees in the abolition of
the State no longer a final goal, but a near goal.
It rejects or relegates to the background the action
of the proletariat with a view to conquering
political power.

And by this fact, it puts itself in opposition
with the ruling ideas of the social democracy.
3. The Social Democracy

Reformist socialism, retaining from the Com-

INTRODUCTION 45

munist Manifesto nothing but its program for
immediate realization, tends to degenerate into
a State of socialism, dominated by parliamentary
and electoral considerations.

Revolutionary syndicalism, on the contrary,
pushing to extremes the anti-statism of Marx and
Engels, retains only their final objective, the abo-
lition of the State, and sees in the political action
of the labor parties only an accessory or even
a nuisance.

It is at once against this syndicalist exclusivism
and this reformist exclusivism that the social
democracy strives to react, by assigning to the
workers a double objective : ( 1 ) the conquest of
the State by the proletariat organized into politi-
cal parties; (2) this conquest being accomplished,
the abolition of the State as an organ of domina-
tion of one class over another, or, to repeat the
expressions already quoted from Kautsky, "the
transformation of present society into a great
economic co-operative by the centralization of the
means of production."

But inside the social democracy, we may point
out notable divergencies as regards the manner
of conceiving the conquest of the State, the seiz-
ure of political power.

Among the members of the International and
of the parties affiliated with the International,

46 INTRODUCTION

there are some, on the right, whose conception
does not greatly differ from that of the inde-
pendent socialists or reformists ; there are others,
on the left, who are on the contrary more or less
close to revolutionary syndicalism ; and between
these two extremes, we find, more or less numer-
ous in the various countries, under the names of
"Marxians," "radicals," "revolutionary socialists,"
militants who strive to shape their action to the
fundamental ideas developed in the Communist
Manifesto and the other writings of Marx and
Engels.

As a matter of fact, no lines of demarcation are
clearly drawn between these three groups.

Among the socialists with reformist tendencies
who adhere to the International, there is none,
however enamored of electoral and parliamentary
methods, who does not admit that, at a given
moment, the conquest of political power may be
the result of a revolutionary act or a series of
revolutionary acts, and that, on the other hand,
the direct action of the industrial unions may
be a necessary adjunct to the action of the social-
ist parties.

Likewise, among the "revolutionaries," there
are none who ignore the utility of parliamentary
or syndicalist action.

As for the socialists with syndicalist tendencies,

INTRODUCTION 47

from the moment they join the socialist party
and the International, they must, by that very
fact, admit the necessity of political action,
whether reformist or revolutionary.

This was recognized by Hubert Lagardelle, for
example, in the following terms in an article,
"The Syndicalist Critique of Democracy," pub-
lished in the Mouvement Socialiste in 1911.

In emphasizing the value of the industrial union, we
have not denied the task of the socialist party. We
have simply given it a limited role: to recognize the
priority of labor organizations in the elaboration of
socialist values and proclaim the relativity of its own
task ; then to limit its action to the field of pure politics,
which syndicalism does not touch; finally, to reduce
the power of the State, by reorganizing the public
service on syndicalist foundations.

Such ideas, assuredly, do not go directly counter
to the declarations of principles found in the
programs of the various socialist parties. They
do not prevent the socialists who "emphasize
the value of the industrial union" from joining
the same groups as other socialists who attach
a greater importance to political action, in the
sense of parliamentary action.

Nevertheless, it should not be ignored that
from the point of view of principles, as well as of
methods, there is somewhat of a margin between
socialism thus conceived and the traditional social-
ism developed from the Communist Manifesto.

48 INTRODUCTION

In order the better to understand this differ-
ence, again, it will be best to compare the argu-
ments of Lagardelle with those of the French
socialists who, under the influence of Jules
Guesde, oppose most energetically the "syndic-
alist" tendencies, and glory in being the most
faithful disciples of Marx and Engels.

Let us not forget, however, that more than
half a century has passed since the Manifesto,
that the unification of socialist forces in France
is, as elsewhere, the result of theoretical and prac-
tical compromises between divergent tendencies;
that, consequently, it becomes difficult today to
oppose clearly Guesdism, the French adaptation
of Marxism, either to the socialism with reform-
ist tendencies, or to the socialism with syndicalist
tendencies. On the contrary, the opposition of
these tendencies becomes very clear when, going
a few years back, as we have for syndicalism
and reformism, we revert to the Declaration of
Principles of the Parti Ouvrier Frangais, founded
in 1880 by Guesde and Lafargue, under the direct
inspiration and with the doctrinal collaboration of
Marx and Engels.

In the theoretical preamble of this program, in
which are found all the essential ideas of the
Manifesto, it is affirmed that "the collective ap-
propriation of the means of production (lands,

INTRODUCTION 49

factories, ships, banks, credit, etc.), can proceed
only from the revolutionary action of the pro-
ductive class, of the proletariat organized as a
distinct party," and that "such an organization
must be striven for by all the means at the dis-
posal of the proletariat, including universal suf-
frage, thus transformed from an instrument of
dupery, which it has been until now, into an in-
strument of emancipation."

It is scarcely necessary to insist on the differ-
ence between this conception and those of syn-
dicalist socialism or of reformist socialism, as
well from the viewpoint of the goal to attain as
of the means to employ.

First, as regards the seizure of political power,
the founders of the Parti Ouvrier believed no
more in the efficacy of the general strike, con-
ceived as the means of accomplishing the social
revolution, then in the gradual conquest of the
State by the sole virtue of universal suffrage.

Moreover, they have not changed their opinion
on this point.

A noteworthy declaration of Guesde is found
in his discussion with Lagardelle at the Congress
of Nancy in 1907 :

Contrary to what some assert, I have never subordi-
nated the emancipation of the proletariat to its electoral
or legal accession to power.

Never have I led the workers to believe for a

50 INTRODUCTION

moment, either in my general propaganda, or in my
campaigns in support of the candidacies of my com-
rades, that the ballot could suffice to set them free;
last year again, at Reims, during the whole electoral
campaign I have been repeating that the elections are
only a means for organizing the proletariat ; they are
its grand manoeuvres. Here it acquires a conscious-
ness and a measure of its strength, at the same time
that it is approaching the position to be captured, until,
with a thrust of two, three, four millions of voters, full
of confidence in itself, it gives the final push, exer-
cising its right of insurrection, accomplishing its
inevitable revolution. To this language I have held
everywhere and always.1

On the other hand, against the anti-statism of

the syndicalists and the statism of the reformists,

the Guesdists maintained, and still maintain, with

more or less fanaticism, that :

1. The existence of public services in the pres-
ent society, by the nationalization of certain
monopolies, has nothing to do with socialism ;
that for the proletariat it presents far more dis-
advantages than advantages.

2. The inauguration of public services is sub-
ordinated to the socialization of the means of pro-
duction and exchange, which itself is subordi-
nated to the seizure of political power by the
proletariat and the expropriation of the capitalist
class, which means revolution.'

1 Le parti soclaliste et la Confederation generate du
Travail, p. 39.

2Guesde, le Socialisme et les services publics, p. 20.

INTRODUCTION 51

On this subject one should read the pamphlet
written by Jules Guesde in October, 1883, from
the prison of Sainte-Pelagie, against Brousse,
Malon and other "possibilists" who advocated,
within the structure of the present society, the
nationalization of the railroads, mines and other
monopolized industries.

Public services thus understood, he said in
substance, have nothing to do with modern social-
ism. Rather than pursue the extension of these,
there is ground for attacking those which exist
and which constitute so many obstacles in the
way of proletarian organization and action. If
Germany has incorporated the railroads into the
imperial State of the Hohenzollerns, it is in order
to bring to its maximum power that machine for
murder and pillage which, across the Vosges
mountains, as everywhere, the army of passive
obedience constitutes, — it is a strategic or mili-
tary expedient. If France has been menaced
for some time with a new public service, the tele-
phones, it is because private telephoning makes a
serious competition with State telegraphy, and
because, moreover, it escapes that eagle eye which
the capitalist State, master of telegraphs and
posts, turns at pleasure upon our letters and mes-
sages,— it is an expedient both of the Treasury
and the police. If the French submarine cables

52 INTRODUCTION

have been laid and operated by the State, it is be-
cause, under the urgent need of binding to the
Metropolis colonies which must not be left to
themselves, our rulers could not extend the neces-
sary time for completing this work to private en-
terprise,— it was a colonial expedient.

We can not even say, as some pretend, that the
public services are at least fortunate expedients,
that they will facilitate the expropriation of the
ruling classes by the proletariat, that the more
the bourgeois State shall have already accom-
plished in the way of public properties with its
various services, so much the easier will be the
task of the expropriators.

In the first place it is not true that public
property results from the private industries an-
nexed by the bourgeois State. In reverting to
the present State, the industries do not lose their
character of capitalist property, that is to say, of
property from which the working class is ex-
cluded. From the property of such or such a
capitalist, they become the property of the entire
capitalist class.

In the second place, the extension of public
services adds a direct increase to the bourgeois
forces. The more industries the bourgeois State
concentrates, the more individuals it binds to
itself and interests in its preservation, if we in-

INTRODUCTION 53

elude merely those, who, favored with better pay
or higher station, must fear any change as a leap
into the unknown.

Moreover, the progress of statization indirectly
fortifies the enemy, by weakening the working
class, whose movements it paralyzes.

Who is less free than the State laborer? Against the
State, no struggle, — I do not say possible to win, but
possible to engage in. The strike is without doubt
nothing but a petty war. It can not lead to emancipa-
tion, because, not touching the principle of wages, it
can not, even if victorious, do more than ameliorate
the condition of the wage-workers, in a word, lighten
their chains.

But the strike is an excellent field for manoeuvres :
it creates at once labor solidarity and labor organiza-
tion. It is a veritable school of war. And from this
school of war is excluded all that part of the proletariat
which the State immobilizes in its workshops. With
the State for employer, the worker is doubly enslaved,
because, held by his stomach, he is equally held by his
collar. The closed shop re-enforces itself with the open
prison, not to take into account that the State, with no
bankruptcy to fear, in the case of persistent working-
class demands, has no economic reason for yielding.

Under these conditions, far from pushing for
the establishment of new public services, the
proletariat ought to urge the suppression of the
public services that exist. So decided the Con-
gresses of Havre and of Roanne, inscribing in
the program of the Parti Ouvrier the following
article : Operation of State factories to be en-
trusted to the laborers who work in them.

54 INTRODUCTION

Let the Bismarcks and the bourgeois republi-
cans strive on the contrary to multiply what they
call public services ; they are in their proper role.
So are the opportunist leaders who, inside the
socialist movement to exploit it, have never seen
in it anything but a roundabout way to impose
themselves upon the bourgeoisie and to get politi-
cal offices for themselves ; but the Parti Ouvrier,
that is to say, the class-conscious party of our
proletariat, will remain faithful to its watch-
word :

"The revolution first, that is to say, the political
and economic expropriation of the capitalist class ;
the public services aftenvards, because, only after
the fusion of classes into one class, that of the
producers, will services really public be possible."

It is quite evident that socialism thus presented
is clearly distinguished from statism.

Far from pushing to their development certain
organs and functions of the State, under its pres-
ent form, it opposes all transformation of private
monopolies into State monopolies, all extension
of public services within the structure of capi-
talist society; and even today, we see the Guesd-
ists, and generally the strict Marxians, remaining
more or less faithful to this line of conduct.

Thus for example in France the socialists who
follow Jules Guesde pronounced formally, in 1909,

INTRODUCTION 55

against the redemption of the West State railway.

But, in the democratic countries at least, the
socialist parties for the most part have departed
or tend to depart from their old uncompromising
attitude.

They approve the immediate monopolization or
nationalization of certain industries. They urge
the seizure of the railroads, the mines, the sugar
or petroleum refineries. They have given over
waiting for the revolution to be first accomplished,
before proceeding to partial extensions of the col-
lective domain, and thenceforth, one may well in-
quire of himself whether there can still be a ques-
tion of speaking of socialism versus the State, —
whether one ought not to admit on the contrary
that, little by little, democratic socialism, sliding
over a dangerous precipice, tends to become a
State socialism.

It is this that we propose to examine, inquiring
in what measure, under the pressure of events,
the primitive conception of Marxism is being
modified, or must be modified, on these two
essential points :

1. The conquest of political power by the
proletariat ;

2. The transformation of present society into
a "great economic co-operative by the socialisa-
tion of the means of production."

Socialism Versus the State

PART ONE
The Conquest of Political Power
The idea of the proletarian conquest of politi-
cal power presents itself, at its origin, under
very simple forms.

This, for example, is how Engels describes at
once the goal and the means of the revolution
which the socialist proletariat is to accomplish :

Anarchy in social production will be replaced by the
social and systematic regulation of production, taking
into account the needs of the community as well as of
each particular individual ; the mode of capitalist appro-
priation in which the product enslaves first its producer,
then also its consumer will give way to a mode of dis-
tribution solidly founded on the nature of the modern
means of production : on the one hand, direct social
appropriation as means of maintaining and developing
production ; on the other hand, direct individual appro-
priation as means of existence and enjoyment.

The capitalist mode of production, by progressively
transforming the great majority of the people into
proletarians, creates the force which, under penalty of
death, is constrained to accomplish this revolution. By
progressively transforming the principal means of pro-
duction into State property, it indicates unmistakably
the means for accomplishing this revolution. The pro-
letariat grasps the power of the State, and first of all
transforms the means of production into State property.

57

Y

58 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

By that act, it abolishes itself as proletariat, it abolishes
all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and at the
same time also it abolishes the State as State.

We see that, in Engels' thought, the conquest

of political power by the proletariat, that is to say,

the social revolution, requires for its realization

two preliminary conditions :

1. The proletarianisation of the great mass of
the population;

2. Political action by the proletarian class, with
a view to grasping the power of the State, thus
becoming the ruling class.

Of these two conditions, the former does not
depend on the will of the workers. Without capi-
talism, no proletariat, and without proletariat, no
socialism ; consequently, the first question which
arises is to know whether, really, in the most
advanced countries, the proletariat constitutes, or
tends to constitute, "the great majority of the
population."

It would be going outside the limits of this
study to justify, by complete statistical evidence,
our affirmative answer on this point.

We have done this elsewhere,1 and, for the rest,
the great industrial census reports of recent years
prove that in all the countries where capitalist
production prevails, the number of wage-workers

1 E: Vandervelde, Le Collectivisme et revolution ln-
dustrielle. Paris, Bibliotheque socialiste.

THE CONQUEST OF POLITICAL POWER 59

is increasing at the expense of the independent
producers.

Even in a country like France, where the small
bourgeoisie is still deeply rooted, the official sta-
tistics of 1906 estimates that, in the active popu-
lation, 20,000,000 in round numbers, there are no
more than 8,300,000 proprietors (men and
women) against 11,700,000 wage- workers, — about
two proprietors to three laborers,2 and the pro-
portion of the latter tends to increase.

Much more is this so in Germany, where capi-
talist evolution is far more accentuated. One
may judge from the following figures :

Active Population in Commerce, Manufactures,
Agriculture

Employers Wage-workers Proportion

1882 5,191,000 11,013,000 2.1

1895 5,474,000 13,438,000 2.5

1907 5,490,000 19,127,000 3.5

The number of proprietors, then, remains sta-
tionary; the number of wage-workers increases
rapidly, and if the proletarianization of the
laborers is not equally marked in all countries,
there are some, even at present, like Saxony,
Belgium, England, where one of the two pre-
liminary conditions for the conquest of political
power is already realized : the great majority of

2 Introduction, par M. Fontaine, aux Conferences faites ft
l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes sociales sur la concentration dea
entreprises industrielles et commerciales. Paris, Alcan, 1913.

60 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

the people is composed of proletarians, manual
or intellectual.

As for the other condition, it is enough to open
one of the periodical Bulletins of the International
Socialist Bureau to be convinced that wherever
capitalism is deeply rooted, there exists hence-
forth, under the names of social-democracy,
socialist party, Parti Ouvrier, Labour Party, etc.,
an organization composed mainly of proletarians
who, following the ideas of Marx and Engels,
take for their goal the conquest of the State by
the political action of the working class.

That this political action may, or must, at a
given moment, take a revolutionary form, using
this word in the sense of a resort to force, — most
socialists, if not all socialists, admit.

But in practice this does not prevent them from
being unanimous in the opinion :

1. That the proletariat should strive to obtain
universal suffrage applying to all elections, with
political liberties to make possible its normal
functioning.

2. That it should use the ballot, in order to
penetrate the local, provincial or national as-
semblies with as many delegates as possible.

The establishment or the complete extension of
universal suffrage is evidently no longer more
than a question of time. It has lately been estab-

THE CONQUEST OF POLITICAL POWER 6l

lished in Holland and Roumania. It will be to-
morrow in Belgium, and after what has come
about in Germany, where the Kaiser himself pro-
claims the necessity of doing away with the Prus-
sian electoral system, no one doubts that within
a few years democracy will triumph in all coun-
tries of European civilization ; in law, if not in
fact, the "sovereignty of the people" will be com-
plete ; the ancient thrones will no longer exist,
unless in the form of decorative survivals ; we
shall see a general extension of the system already
existing — with "conservative guarantees" whose
importance will diminish — in France, in England,
in the United States, in the English colonies,
Australia or South Africa.

But it is not enough to have the ballot. There
is also need of the knowledge and power to use
it. Now it is precisely in the countries where the
ancient thrones have most completely disappeared,
where the forms of democracy are most com-
pletely realized, that the gravest doubts arise as
to the efficacy of political action and the possi-
bility for the proletariat of achieving by this
method the conquest of power.

Who, in fact, in the countries where purely
democratic forms exist, so to speak, would ven-
ture to characterize as false this description of
modern political evolution given by Ostrogorski

62 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

in "La Democratic et les Partis Politiques," a
book admirably fortified with references to
original sources:

Going back to the starting point, we see the State in
the hands of a class, and society, incarnated in this
ruling class, dominating the individual by overwhelming
him with all the weight of social, religious and political
convention. But this triple tyranny yields and declines
under the pressure of multiple forces of a moral and a
material order. The enthusiasm of religious faith,
which discloses itself to itself, the critique of reason
which asserts itself triumphantly, the new engines of
industry, — all unite to free the individual from his
bonds. The autonomous individual is finally proclaimed
sovereign in the State, and jealous of his new power,
he seeks to gather directly to himself, as to their source,
all relations of public order, constitutional as well as
extra-constitutional. But, singular phenomenon, the
more he advances the more he seems again to ap-
proach his point of departure.

In fact, we observe that the role of the individual in
the State is reduced to a very small thing: he exercises
but the shadow of the sovereignty so pompously and
hypocritically ascribed to him ; he has, in reality, no
power over the choice of the men who govern in his
name and by his authority ; the Government is a
monopoly: it is in the hands of a class which, without
forming a caste, constitutes a group apart in society;
often it is exercised by one man who leans on this
class and enjoys the power of an autocrat despite the
republican forms of the State. This yoke is borne by
the great mass of society with indifference and pass-
ively, as in the former time when it was forbidden to
concern itself with public affairs under penalty of being
treated as in rebellion. The Government is put at the
disposal of private interests in their enterprises against
the general interest; legislation and administration are

THE CONQUEST OF POLITICAL POWER 63

bought and sold ; public offices themselves are virtually
put up at auction.

Under such conditions, democracy appears as

an empty form, to which the capitalist class

adapts itself as readily as to systems of restricted

suffrage.

The causes of this situation are only too easy to
determine : ignorance, credulity, passivity of the
masses of the people ; corruption practiced by pro-
fessional politicians ; resistance opposed by the
rigid structure of the traditional parties to the
birth and development of new political forma-
tions ; demoralizing influence of a cheap press,
sold out to capitalism ; direct action of the
bourgeois State on the functionaries who depend
on it, on the children and young people who re-
ceive its instruction, on the soldiers shut in its
barracks, on the faithful members of the churches
which, in the interest of social conservation, it
subsidizes.

But all these causes themselves carry us back,
on final analysis, to a fundamental cause ; this is,
that in our democracies, even more than in coun-
tries less developed politically and economically,
the real power belongs to the kings of finance, of
industry, of the great landed property, and that,
for the moment, the beginnings toward the con-
quest of political power by the proletariat are but

64 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

a trifle in presence of the achievement of the
conquest of the public powers by the capitalist
class.

How, by what means, has this conquest been
made and how is it maintained? That is what
we shall show, drawing our examples especially
from the three great democracies of the con-
temporary world, the United States, England and
France.

We shall next inquire whether, in the very
hypothesis that the proletariat, in spite of the
means of resistance of the capitalist class, suc-
ceeded in winning the majority, this victory would
not be rendered inoperative by the bankruptcy
of parliamentarism, the present decadence of
which seems to presage its final burial.

CHAPTER I

THE CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF THE PUBLIC POWERS

In most countries, the establishment of uni-
versal suffrage has been the result, either of an
insurrectional movement, as in France, or of a
proletarian effort characterized by demonstra-
tions, riots or political strikes, as in Belgium,
Sweden, Austria and England.

Suddenly the bourgeoisie, until then solely in-
vested with the ballot, saw itself despoiled of its
privilege. A flood of new voters, belonging to
all classes, submerged the landholding minority,
and then, in the industrial countries at least, this
problem confronted the rulers : How take con-
trol of universal suffrage? How arrive at this
result, paradoxical in appearance, that in an elec-
toral body where the class interest of the majority
of the citizens is to emancipate themselves from
capitalist rule, this rule shall be more than ever
maintained and sometimes even consolidated?

Certainly, to realize this conquest, the capitalist
minority has been obliged to reckon with other
classes, to seek the alliance of the peasants and
little bourgeois, to give its politics at least the

65

66 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

appearance of democracy, to interest in its plans
the prestige and the political influence of the
churches, and to increase by all methods the action
of the "social authorities" upon the masses. But
all this would not have sufficed if the masses
themselves were not, in normal times, stubbornly
conservative, instinctively hostile to all change,
profoundly respectful of the established order.

This is what Ibsen has shown in a gripping
way in his "Enemy of the People," and this is
what an English publicist, Mr. Buchan, declared
with undisguised satisfaction in an article in the
Fortnightly Review (November, 1913), "Democ-
racy and Representative Government" :

Everyman is a pretty sagacious fellow. He is not
the neurotic being, living in a whirl of elementary
emotions, that some would have us picture him. He
is, as a rule, much wiser, much more steadfast than
his official interpreters. He has no jealousy of the
State, but on the other hand he has no morbid craving
for its attentions. He is not a doctrinaire, and he is
eminently practical. I know him in my capacity as a
tradesman offering him wares, and I have the utmost
respect for his good sense. If you present him with
fantastic schemes of change, he will be apt to reply
as the Highlander replied to a certain Commission,
which offered him a holding if he was prepared to keep
some thirty official commandments — he declined on the
ground that he could have the whole Kingdom of
Heaven for keeping ten. At the same time, he is no
anarchist, he is an obedient soul, and he has a strong
respect for all reasonable laws. In his heart of hearts,

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 67

as Lord Hugh Cecil once said, he is "profoundly
unrevolutionary."

Of all the "conservative guarantees" that the
partisans of the present social system can ask
against democracy, assuredly none is more effi-
cacious than this conservatism, this hatred of the
new, in the masses. Nevertheless, we willingly
recognize — and but for this we should be indiffer-
ent to universal suffrage — that from the instant
when an important fraction of the proletariat be-
comes conscious of its class interests, the bour-
geoisie can no longer count exclusively on these
moral factors, determined as they are by the
economic conditions of the past.

So it puts into operation, with increasing
energy, the various means of influence at its dis-
posal, whether upon the electors or upon those
elected by universal suffrage.

1. Action Upon the Voters

By the very fact of their wealth the possessing
classes have at their disposal a series of means of
influence whose relative importance varies in the
different countries. Chief among these are: cor-
ruption, direct or indirect; pressure exercised on
voters by employers, landlords, charitable institu-
tions, or again even by the State ; the permanent
action of the press; the methodical organization
of voting masses, under the form of parties, dis-

68 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

posing of considerable resources furnished by
the master class.

(a) Corruption

"To represent the Belgian people," said the
newspaper L'Independance of June 19, 1908, "it
is not necessary to have either intelligence or
knowledge ; it is necessary to have money. This
is stupid, it is revolting, it is shameful, but it is
so. The facts are there."

We are tempted to take this statement literally
when we see that in Belgium, and still more in
other countries, in spite of the poor forming the
great majority, almost all the deputies are rich,
or at least well-to-do.

Nevertheless, it would be a serious and unde-
served insult to the poor if we were to attach
excessive importance to direct corruption. We
may take it for granted, on the contrary, that
most people, in most districts, are not influenced
by gifts or promises of money or food.

In Belgium, and in France, a few districts can
be named, but only a few, where notoriously con-
sciences are for sale.

In England, where formerly corruption was a
constant plague of political life, the two traditional
types of electoral corruption, bribery and treat-
ing, no longer have, since the extension of the
franchise, the same development as formerly.

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 69

There are districts, especially in the "cathedral
cities," where votes are bought at a tariff ranging
from one shilling to ten. Often, also, beer is
offered at a reduced price, on the eve of elections.
But on the whole, these rudimentary forms of
corruption no longer play any considerable role.
They have given way to more disguised processes,
which agree better with improved manners and
the vast extension of the electoral body : presents
are made to cities, gifts to all sorts of religious,
charitable or sporting institutions ; "smoking con-
certs," amusements, picnics, dances, "primrose
league feasts" are organized ; all this costs dearly
and is within the reach of none but rich men or
rich parties ; but it is hard to maintain that this is
corruption properly so-called.1

In fact, the buying of votes, or distributions of
beer and wine are not practiced wholesale and
have no real influence except in a few rotten
boroughs, in certain localities where receivers of
charity are particularly numerous, and in coun-
tries where, as in the United States, the condi-
tions of political and social life are more favor-
able than elsewhere to the development of cor-
ruption.

Before the civil war there were in the United

1 Ostrogorski, La D6mocratie et les Partis politiques, edi-
tion 1912, p. 217 and following.

70 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

States only three or four cities, headed by New
York, in which money was used to buy votes.
But after the war, the increasing violence of
party spirit and the extraordinary development of
the spoils system made the corruption of voters
a regular practice. The rapid growth of the
cities, inevitably accompanied by the development
of the proletariat and also of a semi-criminal
class, the arrival of miserable emigrants from
Europe and the extension of suffrage to the
Negroes, had, on their side, increased the venal
contingents. The entry upon the political stage
of the trusts, and, in general, of the great indus-
trial and financial interests, which sought to select
for their own convenience the legislative, admin-
istrative and judicial officers, contributed largely
to furnish the necessary funds for the purchase
of votes.

In many parts of the Union, the electoral customs
are pure enough, but in many others corruption is
permanently established. And what is remarkable and
somewhat surprising is that the cities are not the only
or even the principal home of corruption. Even in
the contaminated cities, corruption is not always indi-
vidual, they Buy the "workers," the petty "leaders," who
exercise an irresistible influence over a certain number
of poor voters and make them vote according to their
command without paying them regularly the price of
their votes. The parties often obtain, almost in the
same manner, the votes of the members of the labor
unions : the leaders "sell out" to the parties, without

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 71

the laborers suspecting it. The city electors who sell
their votes deliberately belong, for the most part, to
the dregs of the population. The most shameless ven-
ality is often found in the rural districts, notably in
New England, inhabited by the descendants of the
Puritans. Votes are sold there openly as at market;
they are quoted regularly at fixed prices. And it is
not merely the wretchedly poor who traffic in their
votes, but very comfortable farmers, of American stock,
pious people who go to church every Sunday. In some
rural districts, a quarter or a third of the electors sell
their votes. (Ostrogorski.)

Note, however, that in recent years things have
improved, due to the electoral reform assuring
secret voting, known as the Australian Ballot.

The public market for votes held in New York
and other large cities has disappeared. Good
order prevails at elections. In certain places, the
parties agree to abstain from corrupt practices.
(b) Coercion

There is perhaps no country where, on the day
after an electoral battle, the vanquished parties do
not attribute their defeat to acts of coercion of
which the adversary is guilty.

In Belgium, for example, the parliamentary
annals are full of such accusations.

Whether it is a question of municipal or of
legislative elections, liberals and catholics
mutually accuse one another of having, by illicit
means, influenced the votes of their laborers, their
tenants, or again of unfortunates receiving public

72 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

or private charity, or finally of employes and
functionaries dependent on them.

Such doings, certainly, can have no great effect
in the cities, but it is otherwise in certain indus-
trial neighborhoods where a big employer makes
the laws, and especially in the rural districts.

Nothing is more sadly instructive on this sub-
ject than the debate that occurred in the Belgian
Chamber in July, 1912, on the validity of the elec-
tions in the district of Nivelles. A liberal deputy,
M. Jourez, had described in these impressive
terms what he called "landlord pressure" :

In this sort of fraud, there is no outlay on the part
of the corruptor. It is enough, for him who would
dictate how men shall vote, to have or even merely to
be administering landed property, and finally, to add
to these rare gifts a little audacity.

This system of fraud, moreover, is practiced in an
interesting little world of which a few words need to
be said. It is not a rich world, often poor, still
attached to its native soil, resisting the seduction of
the city octopus. Like his father and often his grand-
father, the little cultivator lives on his land, which
does not belong to him, but which he considers some-
what as if it did. Never or very rarely does he hear
of the real master, that is of the proprietor, whom he
knows slightly if at all. He thinks of him only at the
feast of Saint Andre, when leases are signed. If he
attends to his business, this date will trouble him little.
But the time that the master of the land reveals him-
self (understand of course that this master is of the
clerical party) is on election day. This day has often
been a tragical one for people bound to the land, for

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 73

it is then that the proprietor or his agent looms up
before the little tenant and tells him: "Today you have
to choose between your interests and what your con-
science dictates, you are going to vote as I think best
and as I wish, or I will take your land away. You will
have to leave this land on which you were reared, where
your forefathers have lived."

And then, this unfortunate who thinks of his wife
and of his children whom he must feed, while perhaps
professing a political opinion contrary to that of his
landlord, bows before this will stronger than his. He
hides deep down in his heart his feelings of revolt. He
marches! But if his conscience is stronger than his
interests, it resumes its rights to liberty, and then,
because he refuses to be enslaved, and does not march,
they crush him. (Annates parlementaires, 1912, p. 185.)

These facts were scarcely contested by the
opponents of M. Jourez. They merely replied
that the liberals acted in the same way, that they
bought land to lease it to the electors who voted
right, and that on the whole they were as little
qualified as possible to pose as defenders of the
liberty of the weak.

We do not propose to inquire as to the extent
of the truth in these reciprocal accusations. In
such matters, legal proof is generally difficult to
find, and, moreover, acts of direct and punishable
coercion are, on the whole, a very small thing
compared with the indirect and non-punishable
pressure exercised in all countries by the heads
of industries, the landlords, the superintendents
of charity bureaux, the members of charitable

74 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

societies, and the high officials, over the people
who become dependent on them.

Consider, indeed, the enormous percentage rep-
resented in the electoral body by laborers who
would have trouble, in case of dismissal, to find
another job, by tenant farmers who are afraid
of losing their holdings when their leases expire,
or who have no written lease, by unfortunates
who find themselves in the power of the overseers
of the poor or of the visitors from the Catholic
charitable societies, and by government employes
and officials whose advancement is subject to the
good pleasure of their superiors. Perhaps this
does not go to the point of forbidding them to
vote as they like, — something which the secret
ballot may render difficult, if not impossible, —
but they are forbidden to go into politics, or to
receive certain newspapers, or, if they have a little
tavern, to put rooms at the disposal of propa-
gandists of the party they might prefer; and alto-
gether, it is possible thus to crush in the egg —
wherever these influences are not counteracted —
any movement which might tend to emancipate
the workers.

What this dependence of the poor may be, espe-
cially in rural districts where the clergy and the
landed proprietors work together, may be judged
by this extract from a pamphlet written by a

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 75

Belgian Catholic, in the form of an open letter
to Mgr. Mercier, cardinal archbishop of Malines :

When oppression results from the fraternal accord
of the ecclesiastical authority with the powers of gold,
with the armies of the land and of the feudal past, that
is the regime of Pharisaism.

In no part of Belgium has this lamentable league of
the castle and the altar produced more disastrous con-
sequences than in the province of Namur, where the
Administration is resolutely theocratic. Here it is
systematically based on servitude. Here the money-
lenders of the Powers dictate their sovereign wills to
their beneficiaries, who are but persons interposed, the
pensioners of the system. Everything, public or private,
that attempt a show of resistance, is boycotted and
despoiled administratively of its most sacred rights : it
is outlawed. Pitiless demands are made on the small
and the humble, by the same title and by the same
means of pressure, with the practice of religion, homage
to the priest, and low servilities, homage to the lord of
the manor. Nowhere is the poor more despised and the
worker less honored.1

All who know our country districts will recog-
nize the truth of this picture.

(c) The Press

"In a democracy," said Montesquieu, "institu-
tions are worth no more than the public opinion
that controls them."

Now public opinion is, in great part, made by
the press, and except in a few countries where a
powerful labor organization exists, the press is

1 Stephane, Le Projet Poullet, p. 24. Bruxelles, Lebfigue,
1913.

76 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

almost wholly in the hands of the capitalist class.

Formerly, a newspaper was an enterprise essen-
tially political. Certain men associated themselves
for the defense of an idea or for the conquest
of power. They founded a daily, an instrument
of propaganda or combat. They did not seek to
make profits from the sale of their sheet. Jour-
nalism had nothing in common with business.

Within some thirty years, all has changed. No
doubt, there are always some political papers, de-
pending more or less on party organizations, but
more and more we see the development in all
countries of a new press, cheap and widely cir-
culated. It declares itself "independent," but it
is really the servant of the business men who
direct it, own it or subsidize it.

Here again we observe, as far as power is con-
cerned, an apparent democratization of the organs
of opinion, and an actual seizure of these by the
plutocracy.

This evolution was long ago accomplished in
the United States. It has even provoked such
scandals that the influence of the press tends to
decrease, and the intellectual leadership has
passed, for the "better element," to the magazines
and the weekly and monthly reviews.

It would certainly be exaggerating to claim
that the situation was as bad in England, where,

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 77

however, within the last few years most of the
newspapers have been bought by financiers or
syndicates of wealthy men,1 but it is perhaps in
France that the abuses are most flagrant, and the
organization of the press most detestable. De-
laisi, in "La Democratic et les Financiers," 2 and
with more precision and exactness Andre Mori-
zet, in a pamphlet published in 1912, "Why We
Need a Powerful Press," have clearly shown in
fact, that lacking a maximum sale, as in the case
with almost all radical sheets, or by reason of
expenses so high that no sale, however, enormous,
could cover them, as is the case with the great
newspapers — most French journals are obliged,
in order to live, to count on their "publicity," to
accept secret funds, to assist in floating the securi-
ties of the big banks, not to speak of unclean
messes such as receiving subsidies for undertak-
ing private campaigns, masked under a pretext
of public utility or patriotism, or better still to
maintain a silence as of the tomb on questions
that an honest press ought to raise.

It is easy to imagine what, under these condi-
tions, must be the influence upon universal suf-
frage of a press which, to quote the words of
Jaures on the N'Goko Sanga scandal, "through

1 Ostrogorski, edition of 1912, p. 182.

2 Page 145 and following.

78 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

the organs of all parties strikes the same note at
the same hour, discredits or exalts the same enter-
prises, and pushes all opinions like a flock o.f
sheep along the same road."

This influence, which is still enormous, would
be limitless, if the public had not learned to mis-
trust the tendency campaigns of the "big papers,"
and if, despite the insufficiency of their circula-
tion, the labor and socialist papers were not
sometimes in a position to check them. It should
be added that, in many countries, and notably in
France, the press of the smaller cities, less con-
taminated, possesses a political influence greater,
perhaps, than the press of the capital.

(d) The Methodical Organization of
the Voting Masses
Aside from the people who are bought, in-
timidated or deceived, there are others who are
enrolled in the traditional parties, and who conse-
quently remain faithful to them, through habit,
through conservatism, through fear also that the
creation of new parties might help their oppo-
nents. This in part explains, for example, the
survival in the United States of two parties, two
"machines," which differ very little in their pro-
grams, and which are both made up of elements
absolutely heterogeneous.

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 79

The same situation, under other forms, exists
in France, where the political labels — republican,
radical, radical-socialist, independent socialist —
have little meaning.

It is the same, although to a less degree, in
England, where Ostrogorski characterizes in
these terms the degeneracy of the two great

Scarcely distinguishable from each other by their
principles and by their methods, the parties contend,
first and last, for power. Their leaders, some of whom
are men of great talent and executive ability, can not
nevertheless act like statesmen, even if they have it in
them; they have not and can not have a definite
harmony of ideas, nor a determined and consecutive
policy. Their supreme concern is momentary party
advantage. Their programs are constructed above all
for the needs of the war that the parties wage on each
other; apart from the problems really arising from the
national life, others are introduced in order to play
with them, head or tail. The current phrase "the party
game" is in fact a key to the predominant character of
their combats. Not that the leaders and their partisans,
the great majority at least, lack convictions and sin-
cerity, but the eager pursuit of party success disguises
them so well that often it is impossible to distinguish
whether this success is a means or an end.

Under these conditions, it is inevitable that to
win success, the parties, reduced in a way to the
status of machines, substitute for the propaganda
of ideas the processes of advertising which are
used in the business world. But these advertising
processes come high. It is necessary to put up.

80 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

on all the walls of the city or the country districts,
innumerable posters, to print and carry to the
homes professions of political faith, circulars,
portraits, biographies, to have a newspaper to
defend their ideas and insult their adversaries, to
hold meetings, rent halls, support a whole army
of ward workers, bill posters, and electoral
agents.

Delaisi1 estimates the average expense of an
election in France at 50,000 francs. In England
and the United States it costs more, since, inde-
pendently of election expenses properly so called,
campaign advertising plays a part much more
considerable and ever increasing. For some time,
Ostrogorski tells us, the campaign period in Eng-
land has been marked by a veritable poster de-
bauch. It is a sort of steeplechase, between the
rival candidates, as to who shall cover and recover
the most walls with posters. The more numerous
a candidate's posters, the greater is the impression
he produces upon the crowd. If, on the contrary,
a candidate wearies of the game, it must be sup-
posed that he has lost confidence in his cause, or,
which is more serious, that he has exhausted his
bank roll. And naturally, these posters are much
less for instructing and convincing the voters than

1 La Democratic et les Financiers.

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 81

to stun them, to hypnotize them, to give them the
illusion of power and superior numbers.

In the United States, as every one knows, it is
worse still.

To manifest enthusiasm, or to provoke it, the
"workers" of the different parties resort to an
assortment of methods which they themselves
designate under the name of "the Chinese busi-
ness": mass meetings, with musical interludes,
fireworks, torchlight processions, cavalcades with
horses and bicycles, aquatic parades with hun-
dreds of vessels ranged in file, and processions
where sometimes more than 100,000 men march
past some high personage of the party, headed
by the candidates themselves, with music, flags
and banners.

It goes without saying that campaign advertis-
ing, when it reaches such proportions, is possible
only for the parties supported by very rich people.
And naturally, these subsidize only parties from
which they have something to expect for the
defense of their class interests or even their
private interests.

The role played in France by the great com-
mittees of Paris is well known, for example the
famous "Comite Mascuraud"; or again in Eng-
land, the brewers, who are, with the great landed
proprietors, the principal support of the Conserv-

82 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

ative party, while the newly-rich, aspiring to
nobility, are the most generous contributors to
the funds of the Liberal party.

In the United States, the dependence of the
politicians on capitalism is still more flagrant.

Gifts from private persons, Ostrogorski * tells us,
furnish a very considerable part of the campaign funds.
In most cases, this is pure speculation, an investment
of money which, later on, may return much in the way
of favors. The representatives of the big industrial or
financial interests, the corporations or the individual
capitalists, by a heavy contribution to the campaign
funds, obtain a sort of mortgage on future administra-
tion or legislation. The sums given by corporations,
secretly be it understood, for the presidential campaigns
of 1896-1904, furnished an enormous corruption fund
which was duly expended. It is estimated that in 1896
the national Republican chairman had at his disposal a
war chest of $7,000,000; in 1900, $3,500,000; in 1904,
$3,000,000.

The revelations made after the presidential

campaign of 1904 excited public opinion against
contributions from corporations. Laws were
enacted. The scandal itself was a healthy sign.
The last presidential campaigns were conducted
more scrupulously. But the interests at stake are
too considerable for the ruling classes to omit
employing, more or less openly, the means of
action at their disposal for influencing voters.

To recapitulate, the possessing minorities have
powerful methods, legal or illegal, to neutralize

1 Page 473.

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 83

or turn in their favor the "force of numbers."
They have on their side tradition, the prestige of
"social authorities," experience in affairs, the
superiority of knowing how. They hold the poor
through the church, through the school, through
the charitable societies, by a thousand ties of
interest or fear. They can boycott the merchants
who think evil, discharge the laborers who make
a show of independence, evict the tenants who
dare oppose them. They have an all-powerful
press. They dominate the old parties, which
need their money to live on. And, under these
conditions, wherever these methods of control are
not checked by powerful labor organizations, they
preserve, under the system of universal suffrage,
almost the same preponderance as under the
system of restricted suffrage.

But, in proportion as their traditional influence
decreases, they are obliged to resort to cruder
or more dishonest methods to maintain their
dominance.

On the one hand, corruption and coercion,
direct, and especially indirect, play a role more
or less important ; on the other hand certain
bourgeois parties, although worn out, decom-
posed and made up of heterogeneous elements,
make up for their lack of a program by their
art in opportunism and in the machinery of or-

84 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

ganization. Speaking of England, where, how-
ever, the political manners still pass as relatively
good, Ostrogorski sketches this picture, by no
means flattering, of the political contests:

All the party activity culminates in a campaign less
for persuading than for hypnotizing the voters; it is
nothing but a continuous appeal to the emotions. All
the methods employed are a general conspiracy against
the credulity of the voters ; the parties compete in
devices to surprise their innocence with falsehoods that
would choke a trooper, with slanderous insinuations in
words and pictures, with appeals to covetousness or
fear, or by the vulgar display of corruption pure and
simple. The captured voters are led to the polls like
cattle, and victory is awarded not to the parties with the
highest principles and the most beneficent laws to
their credit, but to those with the most automobiles
at their disposal.

The author declares, it is true, that the entrance
on the field of the Labour Party has, within the
limits of its action, improved these customs. But
this action has as yet only a limited reach, and
the fact remains that, in the present state of
things, in spite of universal suffrage, in spite of
the "sovereignty of the people," the real power
in the electoral body belongs generally to the
rich.

Moreover, even should this power escape them,
they can re-conquer it by acting, no longer upon
the electors, but upon the elected.

capitalist conquest of public powers 85

2. Action Upon Those Elected

Thanks to the power of control of the possess-
ing classes over the electors, the three great
democracies of the western world are governed
by bourgeois parties.

But these parties call themselves radicals or
democrats. They are obliged to reckon with the
working class. It is sometimes even impossible
for them to form a parliamentary majority with-
out the representatives of the proletariat. To
survive, they are obliged to put through certain
reforms, to repress certain abuses, to attack cer-
tain class privileges, and no doubt they would
do far more toward equalizing conditions if, to
the influences that capitalism exercises upon the
voters, there were not added the influences that
it operates upon those elected and upon the
governments.

This action, naturally, is not so apparent. It
can not be really effective without disguising it-
self. Nevertheless, its results can be guessed. It
is discovered, by studying the relations which
exist between politics and industry or finance. It
is seen, too often, brought into the light of day
by scandalous affairs, which expose the cynicism
of the capitalists and tarnish the reputation of the
politicians.

86 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

Moreover, to penetrate this underworld of
democratic politics, we have guides. Here again,
Ostrogorski's book "La Democratic et les Partis
politiques" is still the principal source of informa-
tion. But it can be supplemented to advantage
by these two other books, one of which we have
already quoted : Delaisi, "La Democratic et les
Financiers," for France, and for England : Bel-
lock and Chesterton, "The Party System."
a. United States

After having shown how in the United States
the bourgeois parties, dominated by the money
interests, are almost always directed by what is
called the "machine," a hierarchy with mercenary
foundations, of professional politicians headed by
a "boss," — Ostrogorski describes in these terms
the action of the machines — State machines or
municipal machines — upon those elected by uni-
versal suffrage:

In every legislative assembly, the machine "owns" a
certain number of members whose election expenses it
has paid. . . . Some legislators sell themselves.
Others, and these are more numerous, honest people
from country districts, yield through weakness.

It goes without saying that most of the time
the "boss" and other "wire pullers" and poli-
ticians are themselves merely instruments in the
hands of the great railroad companies and other
financial or industrial corporations.

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 87

During the last few years especially, the cor-
rupted politicians who direct the political ma-
chines have been, in a way, subordinated, the
retail business of corruption, without being sup-
pressed, now plays only a secondary role ; above
the extra-constitutional government, which holds
the parliamentary or municipal assemblies under
its sway, stand no longer the boss or the political
ring, but the magnates of high finance and big
business. The capitalist conquest of the public
powers is complete, as may be judged from this
summary, made by Ostrogorski, of the situation
in the two chambers of congress, in the state
legislatures and in the municipal assemblies.

1. Congress. In the Senate, the great as-
sembly of the States, there is no public spirit.
It is rather a vast national exchange, with sev-
eral "corners," for steel, cotton, lumber, oil, etc.,
with astute managers and adroit solicitors who
have charge of all these private interests, pre-
occupied with obtaining certain laws or with
preventing their enactment. Business is their
object and business methods are their methods:
the legislative state is conducted on the principle
"do ut des" (I give that you may give), each
interest exacting its price for its support and
obstructing the vote until it receives satisfaction.

The interests are not represented so amply

88 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

in the House as in the Senate ; there are perhaps
not more than a third of the members who repre-
sent private "interests" ; but the others are looked
after by means of the party discipline which
makes them vote with their eyes shut.

2. State Legislatures. In the states dominated
by the machine, and these are precisely the richest
and the most advanced in capitalist concentration,
the majority of the members of the legislature
are merely the damned souls of the "boss," and
at his demand they docilely grant to the rich
industrial or financial companies all sorts of
franchises.

3. Municipalities. The municipal councils are
as a rule like the legislatures: filled with men
elected by the corporation, or with "boodle alder-
men," directly bought by them, they engage in
the same exploits, and with the same disastrous
results for the public fortune.

What corruption leaves undone, thoughtless-
ness and habits of waste accomplish. Affecting
nearly half of the American population and its
most important interests, the administration of
cities furnishes the specatacle of the most com-
plete fisaco of selective government in the United
States. It would, however, be unjust not to point
out that in recent years an effort has been made
to improve the administration of the cities, and,

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 89

in a general way, to give deliberative assemblies
a more healthful atmosphere.

In the course of the presidential campaign of
1912, President Wilson made certain interesting
statements on this subject:

The people of the United States have made up their
minds to do a healthy thing for both politics and big
business. . . . They are going to open doors ; they
are going to let up blinds; they are going to drag sick
things into the open air and into the light of the sun.
They are going to organize a great hunt, and smoke
certain animals out of their burrows. They are going
to unearth the beast in the jungle in which when they
hunted they were caught by the beast instead of catching
him. They have determined, therefore, to take an axe
and raze the jungle, and then see where the beast will
find cover. . . .*

No doubt, those are the words of a candidate,
to which it would be wrong to attach too much
importance. Nevertheless the tendency exists.
Impartial observers — I have in mind for example
President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard Uni-
versity 2 — call attention to it and hold that the
Europeans may exaggerate the organic disorders
of American legislative bodies.

But on the other hand they do not and cannot
fail to recognize that at the present time the

1 Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom. New York, Double-
day, Page & Co., 1918, p. 116.

2 Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government, p. 139,
New York, Longmans, Green & Co., 1913.

90 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

great corporations exercise a formidable influence
over the representative bodies, by the innumerable
berths they can offer the relatives and friends
of the "boss" and of the politicians dependent on
him.

(b) England

In a country like England which has political
traditions and well-established social divisions,
the action which the money power can exercise
upon the legislative and governmental personnel
is not so direct, not so brutal, and on the other
hand, not so necessary.

The Conservative party, when it is not in the
majority, has at its disposal a powerful minority,
singularly keen to defend its class interests. The
Liberal party would be condemned to impotence,
if the rich men who form its right wing refused
their support. And in these two great bourgeois
parties, the organization is so oligarchic that
the American methods for operating on public
opinion have not the same reasons for existence.

But what they do not do, dare not do, could
not do directly, they do, to a certain extent,
indirectly.

There seems to be no doubt, in fact, that, espe-
cially in the Liberal party, many members of
parliament find themselves more or less depend-

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 91

ent upon the big capitalists who provide the
party funds.

Through what mechanism?

To understand this, one should — allowing for
evident exaggerations — read the curious little
book by Bellock and Chesterton.1

To believe our two authors — and Ostrogorski
in his large work arrives at practically the same
conclusions — modern England is not governed,
as would appear, by the House of Commons, but
by a group, or rather two groups, of directors —
the "front benches" — who organize the govern-
ment, under the supreme authority of the "lead-
ers,"' assisted by their "whips."

To whom has passed (they ask) the power of the
House of Commons? To a political committee for
which there is no official name (since it acts in secret),
but which may be called the Front Benches. This
committee is not named by vote, by acclamation, or even
by tacit consent. Its members do not owe their posi-
tion to the will of the House nor to the will of the
nation. It is chosen by a process of co-optation, and,
for the most part, among the rich politicians and their
creatures. It forms, in reality, a single body, and when
its interests or its power are at stake, acts like a single
man.

Assuredly, the "front benches" do not wield

absolute power. They must take account of the

aspirations of the masses, of the wishes of their

party, of the opinions of the "rank and file" of

1 The Party System. London, 1910.

92 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

their colleagues. But over these last at least the
leaders exercise, through the intermediary of the
whips, a considerable influence, not always rest-
ing solely on moral factors.

Elections, in fact, cost dear, and the local
organizations of the parties are generally poor.
To hold a seat in the House involves very heavy
expenses, even today when members receive a
salary.

Under these conditions, labor members aside,
there are but three types of men who can nor-
mally enter the House of Commons : first, the
rich men of a certain locality, who can indemnify
the local organizations ; second, rich men from
outside, who can, by reason of the liberality ex-
pected from them, get themselves accepted by
the Central Committee of the party ; lastly, people
relatively poor, who consent to be more or less
the servants of the party and receive subsidies
to a greater or less extent from the central treas-
ury to defray their election expenses.

Now, the secret funds which keep this chest
filled are at the complete disposal of the leaders,
thus providing, in some sort, a material basis for
their authority. These funds, which they some-
times try to increase by speculations more or
less licit, come, for the most part, from the rich
members of the party. But it is rarely that these

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 93

donors are moved, or solely moved, by enthusiasm
for the good cause. They are more or less inter-
ested in assuring to themselves recognition from
the supreme organizations of the party.

The money given is for them an investment.
Some expect "safe seats" in the House, others
honorific titles : that of knight, baron or even
peer. The others, finally, like the great brewers
who energetically support the Conservative party,
count on the support of their political co-religion-
ists, for the defense of their interests.

In what measure do these pecuniary interven-
tions act upon those elected ? This is rather hard
to say, and certainly nothing happens in England
that resembles, even remotely, the scandalous
scenes sometimes enacted in certain legislatures
of the United States. But the least to be said is
that, the Conservative party being by definition
the party of the status quo, the dependence of
the Liberal party on a few rich men makes it
timorous, retards its march on the path to demo-
cratic or social reforms, and, on the whole, Ostro-
gorski seems to pass an equitable judgment on
English politics when he writes:

While making the greatest possible allowance for
reservations and extensions, ... we arrive at the
conclusion that the Government of England, taken as
it is with conflicting social and plutocratic influences,
with its system of organized parties, with the supremacy

94 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

of executive power and the crushing bureaucracy, is
not a government truly popular. It is a democracy
directed by an oligarchy.

(c) France

Of all the great countries of Europe, France
is undeniably the one whose institutions approach
nearest to the democratic ideal.

All Frenchmen past the age of twenty-one are
voters. The deputies, elected by a majority of
the votes, levy taxes, make laws, control the acts
of the Government, and can, by a vote of censure,
overthrow it. The Senate, that great council of
the communes of France, has itself an origin
more or less democratic. The President of the
Republic is a temporary constitutional sovereign,
who reigns for seven years, but does not govern.

It seems under these conditions that nowhere
should popular sovereignty be so effective. From
the social viewpoint however, there are few as-
semblies so conservative as this Parliament of
the Third Republic, which will have been the
last in Europe to establish, under pressure of
war, the progressive income tax.

Sir Charles Dilke, speaking one day of I know
not what politician of his country, whom he re-
proached with being systematically hostile to
every reform measure, said to me, — "He is as

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 95

conservative as a French radical." And in fact
many of the deputies who sit in the Palais-
Bourbon on the benches of the Left — whether
they are called socialists, radical-socialists, radi-
cals, democrats or progressives — have this in
common, that their politics is essentially respect-
ful toward everything that touches income, indi-
vidual property, or capitalist monopolies.

This conservatism of the self-styled radical
parties is due, of course, in great part, to the
fact that France is an agricultural country, that a
majority of the voters are proprietors, that the
Revolution, by dividing the land, interested mil-
lions of peasants in the maintenance of the order
which it estalbished.

But these peasants, despite their numerical and
social importance, are not the real masters of
France.

In this country, where the greater capitalism is
less developed than, for example, in England or
Germany, its influence over the government is
perhaps greater than anywhere else, because it
meets less opposition.

The Bank of France, the Credit Foncier (land
bank), the railroad companies, the captains of
industry are not only economic powers, but poli-
tical powers, which dominate the apparent mas-
ters of the democracy.

96 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

It is what Lamartine already foresaw in 1838
when he delivered his admirable address in the
Chamber of Deputies, against the grant of rail-
ways to private companies.

There is a sentiment that has always powerfully
moved me, in reading history or in observing events;
it is horror of corporations, it is the incompatibility of
sincere, progressive liberty with the existence of corpo-
rations in a State or in a civilization. What will it be,
great God! when, according to your imprudent system
you shall have established into collective interests and
into industrial and financial corporations the innu-
merable stockholders of the five or six billions that the
organization of the railroads will concentrate in the
hands of its companies.

Change the tariffs then? But how will you change
them? By the law. But who will vote the law? Stock-
holders in the majority. Take over the lines 1 But who
will vote on this? Stockholders again. Then establish
rival lines. But who will vote for these lines? Stock-
holders in the majority. Improve, complete, change
the systems back of your lines ! But who will vote on
these improvements and extensions, demanded perhaps
by the general interest of the country? Stockholders
again. That is to say that you are mortgaging forever,
at a single word, all competition, the future product,
the future improvements of your entire territory.
Vainly will the people demand, complain, accuse the
authorities, they will and you will be, for quarter-
centuries or half-centuries, in the power of the com-
panies. To them you will subject the interests of the
people and the general interests.

Never, perhaps, has social prophecy been so
completely realized ; and, naturally, what Lamar-

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 97

tine said of the railroad companies applies,
mutatis mutandis, to the other great corporations
that dominate the Republic.

We have seen that, to assure this administra-
tion, the capitalists act upon the electoral body,
either having themselves elected when they can,
or subsidizing, without much regard for appear-
ances, the committees of politicians that offer
them guarantees.

But furthermore they act directly on the
deputies and the Government.

In Delaisi 1 will be found in detail, with names
to confirm it, a statement of the means employed
to have, in every group, liegemen who put their
influence at the service of the great capitalist
interests.

Observe, in the first place, apart from the
deputies of business properly so called, who were
in finance or industry before they were in politics,
a certain number of politicians who have been
bound to the interests by admitting them to one
or to several boards of directors.

These business deputies of both groups are
not numerous ; including the senators, they are a
hundred, at most, in the two Chambers. But
they have a considerable influence over their col-

1 La Democratic et les Financiers, p. 76 et s**-

98 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

leagues in the parliament. It is easy for them to
make places in the offices of their companies for
the sons, brothers, nephews or cousins of their
poorer colleagues. They thus make for them-
selves in all parties a clientele of friends ready
to pay with their votes and to carry them into
power when the moment arrives.

Next come the deputies or senators who are
corporation lawyers. Every industrial or finan-
cial corporation must have close at hand a
General Counsel, who gives it advice, indicates
methods of not infringing the law, when delicate
matters are concerned, such as the' formation of
combines, trusts, mergers and other attempts at
monopoly, and who, when necessary, plead for
them in the courts. These functions are very
well paid. There is usually a fixed salary, plus
a high fee for each case in court. So these
positions are much sought after.

Now, for the last fifteen years, the great indus-
trial and financial corporations have been taking
their attorneys preferably from among the mem-
bers of parliament. It is of course understood
that they do not employ the deputy or the senator,
but the attorney, and if when the case comes up,
this attorney, depuy or senator, adds to the weight
of his legal talent that of his influence with the

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 99

government, that is a simple coincidence which
only evil minds will criticise.

Corporation lawyers and capitalists, moreover,
form only a small part of the total number of
representatives. But they are generally leaders.
Their experience or their talent adapt them for
different tasks. In executing these, they demon-
strate their capacity to fill cabinet positions, and
after a few tests, if nothing happens to compro-
mise or discredit them, they attain to power.

Is it surprising, in view of this, that the rulers
of the Republic, incapable of surviving if they
had the Bank and the press against them, escape
from the control of the people and submit to
control by the men of affairs?

Anatole France once asked a minister the
causes of governmental powerlessness in the mat-
ter of reforms.

What would you have us do ? — was the reply —
the minister of finance is in the Credit Lyonnais,
the minister of marine is in the Creusot company,
the minister of war is in the "Commissions," etc.

We arrive on the whole at the conclusion that
everywhere, in modern democracies, the real sov-
ereignty belongs not to the people, but to parties
dominated by the money power.

To remedy this situation, the dangers of which

100 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

he has pointed out with unusual force, Ostro-
gorski proposes certain purely political solutions,
as uncertain as they are insufficient.

Is not the solution, he says, of the problem raised by
parties plainly indicated? Does it not consist in elim-
inating from our practice the use of rigid parties,
permanent parties having power for its end, and in
restoring and reserving to the party its essential char-
acter of a group of citizens, especially formed in viev)
of a definite political demand?

We are as far as possible from this opinion.
True, we may find that party concerns play far
too considerable a role in our societies ; it may be
useful, as a counterpoise to this exclusive influ-
ence, to organize groups of citizens formed with
a view to one definite demand. But how can one
imagine that the creation of leagues of this kind
would suffice to put an end to the reign of
plutocracy, under the mask of party govern-
ments? The fact that permits capitalism to
dominate the democracies, as well as the old
governments, is that "wealth is power."

The only means to check it, and as a final result
to expropriate it politically, is to oppose to its
power, to oppose to the old parties which are
merely its political expression, the power of the
proletariat organized as a class party. But will
this power itself be sufficient? And supposing it

CAPITALIST CONQUEST OF PUBLIC POWERS 101

to be sufficient, is it not to be feared that the con-
quest of political power may be vain and im-
potent, by reason of the bankruptcy of parlia-
mentarism ? It is this that we shall now examine.

CHAPTER II

THE BANKRUPTCY OF PARLIAMENTARISM

Under this title, a few years ago, innumerable
articles were published, and even those that at-
tempted to defend the parliamentary system
recognized that it is passing through a crisis, and
ask themselves whether it will survive the circum-
stances which gave it birth.

In February, 1912, at the moment when the
C. G. T. in France was particularly aggressive,
and when the great transport workers' strikes
had just marked the advent of new social forces
in England, the Revue Blcue, of Paris, questioned
a certain number of public men, — Paul De-
schanel, Maxime Kowalewsky, Virgile Rossel,
deputy of the Swiss National Council, and Emile
Vandervelde — on the probable issue of the con-
flict, in several countries, between syndicalism
and parliamentarism.

We wish to reprint here the critical part of our
reply, on the subject of parliamentary govern-
ment. To develop it would be useless. It deals
with facts that every one can observe daily.

102

THE BANKRUPTCY OF PARLIAMENTARISM 103

"What is this parliamentary government, ar-
rived at the fullness of its developments?

"It is the system of government which has as
its center of gravity an elected assembly the
majority of which makes the laws, votes the
budgets, decides — and this is essential — the fate
of the ministers, intervenes, through them, in
nominations for administrative and judicial
offices, — which possesses, in a word, all the sub-
stance of power, apart from preserving, as forms,
certain traditional institutions, reduced to a deco-
rative status.

"This sovereign assembly, whether divided into
two Chambers or not, is composed of some hun-
dreds of men, who for the most part owe their
election to their local influence, their fortune,
their popularity on good or bad grounds, rather
than to their knowledge or political capacity, — all
of which does not prevent them from being
omnipotent and thus considered omniscient.
Having to pronounce on all questions, they are
presumed to know them all. And in fact, com-
petent or incompetent, they do pronounce on
them, whether they have a personal opinion more
or less ripe, or whether they obey the order of
certain leaders.

"For such a system to function, without result-
ing in bungling and impotence, it requires an

104 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

enlightened electorate, elected representatives
having, with a healthy moral sense, experience in
large affairs, an executive stabilized by party dis-
cipline, legislative problems not too numerous, — •
in short, a combination of conditions such as
were found united, for the greater profit, by the
way, of bourgeois egoism, at the time of the
landlords' regime, under Louis Philippe or
Leopold I. So it should not be surprising that,
on the continent, their reign was the golden age
of bourgeois parliamentarism.

"Today, on the contrary, is the iron age. We
can not blind ourselves to the fact that, more and
more, the conditions for the normal working of
the system tend to disappear. The development
of the functions and the interferences of the
State, in all fields, multiplies indefinitely the
questions to be solved, without any proportionate
increase in the political capacity of the legislators.
The multiplication, not to say the crumbling, of
parties makes more difficult the establishment of
parliamentary majorities grouped around stable
ministries, and these difficulties, judging from
the example of Belgium, will only increase under
proportional representation. The elected repre-
sentatives, when they are not business men work-
ing for their own interests, are almost wholly
ignorant of all the complex gearings of modern

THE BANKRUPTCY OF PARLIAMENTARISM 105

society, and serve the popular cause only by
hollow formulas and legal phraseology. Finally,
the electoral body, with its enormous dead weight
of illiterates and incapables, justifies only too well
this bitter word of P. J. Proudhon : 'In many
cases the voters under universal suffrage have
shown themselves inferior to the landholding
electors of the July monarchy.'

"Certainly the machine runs, in spite of every-
thing, because there are bureaux, commissions of
specialists, and grand councils, which eat up work
for the legislature ; then there is the press, which
supplements, to a certain extent, the flagrant in-
sufficiency of the budget control ; the machine
runs, but with what friction, what jerks, what
wastage of power, and also what deception for
the popular masses, who had based such vast
hopes and such high ambitions on universal
suffrage.

"Oppressed by this deception, they do not see,
they do not wish to see that parliamentary gov-
ernment, with all its faults, constitutes neverthe-
less an immense progress over the former sys-
tems ; that if it is a very mediocre instrument of
reform, it is still an efficacious means for prevent-
ing the abuses of power, — in short that, in the
present state of things, if it did not exist, we
should have to invent it.

106 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

"What they see, and how could they fail to
see it? — is the lost time, the fruitless bustle of the
lobbies, the miserable game of bidding for votes,
the flood of petty neighborhood questions, the
endless babble of legislators who wish to show
their importance, and, inevitable consequence, the
accumulation of unfinished parliamentary busi-
ness, and the miscarriage of hoped-for reforms.

"True, the situation is not equally bad in all
countries. Remedies can be found, or at least
palliatives. But the fact remains that parliamen-
tary government, which was equal to its task
when it was merely the administrative council for
the affairs of the bourgeoisie, is found powerless
to solve all the problems, to face all the diffi-
culties, that arise in a society on the road toward
a revolutionary transformation.

"So no one should be surprised that the work-
ing class, more and more, understanding that it
can not emancipate itself through representatives,
counts before all else upon itself, resorts to direct
action to stimulate, or to replace, the reformist
activity of the parliaments, and, especially in the
countries where parliamentarism has attained the
maximum of discredit, attaches more importance
to syndicalist and co-operative action than to
political action."

CHAPTER III

PROLETARIAN ACTION

Crisis, decadence, perhaps bankruptcy of par-
liamentarism ; capitalist conquest of the public
powers ; control by the possessing classes of the
electors and of the elected ; such are the results,
all too apparent, of the democratic system under
its present form.

On this statement, the democrats and the
socialists, or at least such of them as refuse
to take words at face value, are in accord with
the opponents of democracy, syndicalists or tra-
ditionalists, like Maurras, Deherme, or Georges
Sorel.1

But, it must be said, divergences appear, when
it comes to drawing conclusions.

We naturally pass by those who dream of re-
versing the machine, of substituting for elections
that form of lottery called hereditary monarchy.
For choosing the most competent rulers, we fail
to understand in what respect the chance of
generation is superior to the chance of lottery.

1 See Guy-Grand, "Le Proc6s de la Democratic." Paris,
Colin, 1913.

107

108 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

We dismiss likewise those who would graft
upon universal suffrage certain "conservative
guarantees," such as plural voting, which would
aggravate instead of diminishing the already
excessive power of the ruling classes.

As a matter of fact, whether welcome or
otherwise, every one understands today that
wherever universal suffrage exists, and it exists
almost everywhere, there can be no question of
suppressing it. But if it can not be suppressed,
it can be organized, or else, which is by no means
the same thing, it can organize itself.

Those who wish to organize universal suffrage
by an act of authority, a legislative act, are advo-
cates of various systems designated under the
name of representation of interests. All these
systems have this in common, that they are
essentially arbitrary, that they consolidate the
positions gained by the possessing classes, that
they give a legal sanction to the division of
classes, and substitute artificial compartments
for the spontaneous groups which incessantly
arise from the transformations of the social life.
They do not constitute progress. They are, on
the contrary, an obvious retrogression.

But if we do not admit, if we will not at any
price admit that universal suffrage should be

PROLETARIAN ACTION 109

organized from above, we are, on the contrary,
deeply convinced that it should organize itself.

From now on, it is striving to do this. In all
countries, to facilitate the elaboration of laws, to
aid the parliament in its legislative work, con-
sulting commissions are being created, where the
great interests can be advantageously represented
to make their voices heard, when once the final
decision rests with the national sovereignty. On
the other hand, in the most advanced democ-
racies, universal suffrage tends to replace de-
liberative assemblies on the greatest questions,
through direct legislation. The representative
system continues. The parliamentary system is
on the way to disappear.

In Switzerland, for example, the Federal
Council is not a ministry. It makes room among
its members for the minority. It does not resign
when its propositions are rejected. And, at least
in serious questions, if the National Council and
the Council of States discuss laws, they do not
make them. The legislative power, first and last,
belongs to the people themselves. They have the
right of initiative. They can demand the ref-
erendum. They can at any moment, and on all
questions, substitute themselves for the delibera-
tive assemblies.

110 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

Such institutions, without doubt, have the
future on their side.

But however developed and however perfect
we may conceive them to be, they would still
bring nothing but disillusions and deceptions to
the proletariat, if it counted upon them alone to
conquer real political power.

If this formidable power, the capitalist State,
is first to be checked and later to be abolished,
it is not enough that universal suffrage be organ-
ized. The workers must organize themselves
under universal suffrage. They must, by the
development of working-class organization, under
all its forms, create a State within the State,
whose growing power tends to substitute co-
operative management for capitalist domination.

It is on this condition, and on this condition
alone, that democracy ceases to be an illusion and
a lie.

From the moment, in fact, that real labor
unions exist, they can through their organization
oppose an effective resistance to the effort of the
capitalists to buy, intimidate, deceive and organize
the voting masses.

In the second place, the action of the unions,
and to a less degree, of the other groups, fur-
nishes them the means for exercising from with-
out an effective pressure upon the government.

PROLETARIAN ACTION 111

Finally, it is in the labor organization itself
that a new society is forming, that a new system
of law is being elaborated, and that the proletariat
is acquiring the preparation indispensable for
substituting some day its auto-direction for the
rule of the captains of industry and the magnates
of capitalist society.

1. Resistance to Capitalism

There is on the whole, at the present time, a
single political system in all the nations of
western civilization. The political forms are
diverse and changing. The proportions of power
among the classes vary according to the industrial
development and the groupings of interests aris-
ing from it. The condition of the workers is not
everywhere equally bad, but everywhere the
bourgeoisie alone, or in partnership with other
classes that are declining, controls the govern-
ment. It controls it because really, economically,
intellectually, it is still the directing class. And
that will not change, that can not change, until
the day when the proletariat shall be sufficiently
organized, economically and intellectually, to be
in a position to substitute social production for
capitalist production.

Meanwhile, it is all very well to be the most
numerous class, to have the right to vote, to

112 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

possess the theoretical right to elect the parlia-
mentary majority; the proletariat does not use
this right, and if by any impossible chance it were
to use it, that would merely give the world the
spectacle of its impotence.

If moreover it had any inclination to stop
voting for its masters, to deprive the possessing
minorities of the support which they need in
order to have a parliamentary majority, we have
seen that by its money, by its press, by its
"machine" inside the traditional parties, the bour-
geoisie exercises enormous powers of influence
upon the mass of the voters.

Under these conditions, democracy is and can
be only a vain illusion, so long as the proletariat
remains a dust-heap of individuals.

That is what the syndicalists constantly repeat,
and on this point they are right. Even if electoral
and parliamentary action alone could suffice to
realize socialism — which we do not believe — this
electoral and parliamentary action can not, in
any case, be effective unless the working class
organizes itself, — and not on the political field
alone.

From this point of view, the Social-Democratic
Party of Germany had, before the war, given
examples from which we might have expected it
to take a better attitude at the hour of trial.

PROLETARIAN ACTION 113

To understand this, look through the report of
the Parteivorstand at the Congress of Jena
(1913). At that time there were nearly a million
members (982,850) for the 397 electoral districts.
The receipts of the central organization amounted
to 1,469,000 marks; the expenditures to 1,075,000
marks. Ninety newspapers were under the con-
trol of the party, including the official organ,
Vorzvaerts, with 157,000 subscribers. The cen-
tral educational bureau, founded seven years
earlier, had at its disposal in 1913 for courses
and meetings more than 700,000 marks.1 In
short, the party itself, from the viewpoint of
financial resources, surpasses all the bourgeois
parties. Its press can compete, in number of
readers and in wealth of information, with the
capitalist press. Its educational works are at
once a complement and a corrective to the pri-
mary school. And if, among the four million
voters and more in the Social Democracy, there
are "Mitlaufer" who came into socialism through
a simple spirit of opposition, still perhaps no-
where else can be found so many men with a
clear and precise idea of the final aim to pursue.
Moreover this party organization, without an
equal in the word, would not have had, even from

1 Bericht des Parteivorstandes an dem Parteitag zu Iena.
Berlin, Vorwaerts, 1913.

114 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

the political viewpoint, the power that it pos-
sessed, if the great co-operatives of consumption
affiliated with the wholesale co-operative at Ham-
burg, or the Frcie Gezverkschaftcn, the independ-
ent unions, with their 2,500,000 adherents, not to
speak of the compulsory insurance groups, had
not made of the German working class an eco-
nomic power with which the capitalists were
obliged to reckon on a broad scale.

Why was all this force to be powerless, when
it came to a choice for the German proletariat
between revolt and complicity ? Surely, in normal
times at least, the force of the proletarian organ-
ization never lost an occasion to strengthen itself.

Perhaps some may remember, by way of ex-
ample, the conflict that arose in 1914 between
the Deutsche Bank and the Central Commission
of Unions.

An employee of the Deutsche Bank, having ac-
cepted a position of trust in the Union of Bank
Employees, was disciplined by the bank manage-
ment. The association, identifying themselves
with the employee in question, protested. But
this protest would have had no grave conse-
quences, if the Commission of Unions had not
intervened in the affair. It threatened the bank,
if the measure taken against the employee were
not reversed and explicit guarantees given for

PROLETARIAN ACTION 115

the future that it would withdraw the funds that
it had on deposit. The bank refused, and more
than 20,000,000 marks — the total deposits were
from 80,000,000 to 100,000,000— were withdrawn
to be entrusted to other banks more pliable in
the face of union demands.

It is self-evident that against a working class
with such a defensive organization at its disposal,
the methods of corruption or pressure, resorted
to in other situations, become wholly inapplicable.

One may buy or intimidate Irish or Italian
immigrants lately arrived at New York or Buenos
Ayres, Jewish garment workers of the East Side,
Flemish or Neapolitan tenants, farm laborers in
East Prussia, but nothing can prevent workers in
whom the socialist ideal, organization and con-
sciousness are fully developed from using the
right to vote for the defense of their class
interests.

Even from this point of view, then, it becomes
clear that the social democracy could not entrench
itself on the political field ; could not be a party
purely electoral and parliamentary, with the con-
quest of the State for its sole aim. To accom-
plish the conquest of the State, it must oppose to
the organization of capitalist power the force of
labor organization, with its co-operatives, its
unions, its press, its educational institutions.

116 socialism versus the state

2. Pressure From Without

Ostrogorski, replying to those who say that the
people is incapable of self-government, and that
universal suffrage and parliamentarism are, con-
sequently, an absurdity, subscribes to the first of
these affirmations, but rejects the second:

The political function of the masses in a democracy,
he says, is not to govern but to intimidate the governors.
The real question, again, is to know whether and to
what extent they are capable of intimidating. That the
masses already possess in most democracies today the
capacity to intimidate the governors seriously, is beyond
question. It is thanks to this that actual progress has
been realized in society; with good grace or ill, the
governors are obliged to take account of the needs and
aspirations of the people.

This intimidation of governments, this pressure
from without exercised by the masses, does not
necessarily imply that they be organized.

Mere dread of the voters, when a strong cur-
rent in favor of a reform exists, may decide a
conservative majority to make concessions.

So again with street demonstrations; the first
"social laws" in Belgium were voted by chambers
elected by landholders, under the impressions
produced by the riots of March, 1886. In the
phrase of a conservative writer, Father Ver-
meersch, the bourgeoisie then saw "by the light
of conflagrations" that there was a social
question.

PROLETARIAN ACTION 117

It is by relying on theses of this sort that Sorel,
in his "Reflections on Violence" * (1906), under-
took to justify the methods of the militants of
the C. G. T. For him, the determining factor
in social politics is the poltroonery of the Govern-
ment. The revolutionary syndicalists know this,
and make excellent use of the situation. They
teach the laborers that it is not a question of going
to ask favors (from the government), but that
they should take advantage of "bourgeois cow-
ardice" to impose the will of the proletariat.

There are too many facts supporting this
theory for it to fail of taking root in the labor
world.

But in many cases, on the other hand, the event
has shown that the workers would be making a
grave mistake to count without limit on govern-
mental or parliamentarian weakness, and that
direct action thus understood could not — quite
apart from the question of legitimacy — yield
more than limited results.

However, there is another form of direct
action, which is not, at least not necessarily, ac-
companied by violence: it is the use by labor
organizations, to obtain a political result, to
exercise pressure on the government, of the

1 Sorel. Reflections sur la Violence. La Mouvement soclal-
iste, 1906, vol. I, p. 31.

118 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

methods customary in economic conflicts. And
naturally, this direct action is more effective in
proportion as the working class is better
organized.

It is possible at this date to cite many govern-
mental or legislative interventions that have been
determined by movements of this sort : the
miners' strikes in France for the legal eight-hour
day or the improvement of the pension system,
the general strikes for the conquest of political
liberties in Russia, for universal suffrage in
Belgium and Sweden, or again the railroad and
postofnce strikes in France, Austria, Holland and
Italy.

But the typical case of a strike powerfully or-
ganized, culminating in the imposition upon the
employing class, by legislative act, of a system of
work to which it had refused to subscribe, is the
great strike of the English miners in February
and March, 1912, for a minimum wage.

On the eve of this memorable conflict, one of
the leaders of the Federation of Miners, Harts-
born, said, in a speech addressed to the miners of
South Wales:

The full strength of British democracy can not fail
to obtain from the employers and the State the guar-
antee of a minimum wage for the industry. I predict
that next week Friday (March 1), will mark the date
of a new era in the history of this country. On that

PROLETARIAN ACTION 119

day a million men will break their chains, when they
declare with one voice that they will no more be slaves
and that they will assert their right to be treated like
freemen.

To carry through this great struggle, the
610,000 members of the various miners' unions
had at their disposal a fund of 2,167,000 pounds
sterling, about $10,825,000, giving over $18.00 per
capita. Assuming that each miner had earned
about this amount in the week before the strike,
they had at their disposal an average of $36.00
each, not counting the personal savings they
might have made. But in fact, the fund not
being held in common, the resources varied
greatly from region to region.

Nevertheless the miners were in a position to
hold out for several weeks, thus depriving the
other industries of their "black bread." Thus,
their simple decision to stop work if satisfaction
were not obtained, determined the government to
intervene with the employers, urging their consent
to an amicable solution. The majority of the
heads of enterprises promised to yield. Others
declared themselves for resistance. An agree-
ment failing, the strike was declared. A million
strikers took part in it, and at the end of a few
days, for lack of coal, other laborers, by hundreds
of thousands, were thrown out of work.

120 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

Then to avoid greater disasters, the liberal gov-
ernment decided to regulate the matter by a
legislative act. On March 19, 1912, Mr. Asquith
introduced in the House of Commons the Coal
Mines (minimum wage) bill, recognizing the
principle of the minimum wage for the under-
ground laborers of the coal mines.

This minimum was not fixed by law, but by
Joint District Boards, composed half of repre-
sentatives of the employers, half of representa-
tives of the laborers, with an arbitrator to give
the casting vote.

In a few days the bill passed through all the
stages of parliamentary procedure, usually so
lengthy. The labor members declared it insuffi-
cient, but they had no answer for Lloyd George
when he said to them: "If you were sure that
your opposition would cause the rejection of the
bill, would you speak and vote against it?"

The Liberals, whose election in sixty-four dis-
tricts depended on the miners' vote, supported
Mr. Asquith with more or less enthusiasm. As
for the Conservatives, they voted against it, and
while making no serious effort to prevent the
passage of the bill, they left it to Mr. Balfour
to indicate the motives of the governmental
initiative :

The position of the Government is like that of an

■»>- ^*Staj

PROLETARIAN ACTION 121

individual robbed in a dark street by a man of
formidable aspect, and who might say to him : "My
dear friend, it is not your terrible aspect nor your
heavy club that make me give you my purse and my
watch. Let me assure you, before we separate amicably,
that I am grateful to you for having given me this
opportunity to accomplish an act of tardy justice."

Describing the bill as "panic legislation," he

added :

It is folly to encourage such acts by making all men
believe that they can force the action of Parliament by
such means. Tomorrow they will begin again from the
same motive or others.

It remains to know what Mr. Balfour would
have done, if he had been in Mr. Asquith's place.

It may help us guess, if we remember that the
House of Lords, where his friends were in the
majority, and where they still had the right of
absolute veto, carefully refrained from obstruct-
ing the proposals of the Government.

We may differ, moreover, as to the value and
importance of the results obtained, but, from the
moral view-point, the victory of the miners was
immense, and Mr. Balfour was right in saying
that it would lead to further demands.

Everything indicates, in fact, that more and
more in the future the laborers will resort to the
organized strike, for obtaining legislative re-
forms, and that this pressure from without will
tend to become an almost normal means of pre-

122 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

vailing over the inertia, the weakness and the ill
will of bourgeois parliaments.

Nevertheless we may also foresee that, later
on, the use of such methods will cease to be useful
because the working class will be strong enough,
either to dispense with protective legislation, or
to legislate for itself, instead of constraining its
masters to legislate for it.

3. The Formation of the New System

The unions and other labor groups have thus
far appeared to us as the necessary sub-stratum
of political action and the most effective means
at the disposal of the proletariat for acting on
governments and parliamentary majorities.

But from the view-point of the conquest of
power, their development has an importance even
greater, it is in fact through labor organization
and in labor organization that the workers pre-
pare themselves, by managing enterprises and
administering free associations, to substitute
themselves one day for the administrators and
the captains of industry of the capitalist system.

To understand this immense subterranean
labor, it is necessary to read such books as "La
Coutume Ouvriere" by Maxime Leroy or "In-
dustrial Democracy," by Sidney and Beatrice
Webb.

PROLETARIAN ACTION 123

As the Webbs point out so well, the organiza-
tion of labor offers to the student of democracy
the spectacle of a multitude of independent,
autonomous republics, trying repeatedly all
known political expedients, with a view to com*
bining an efficient administration with popular
control.

Whatever the system adopted, the organization
remains democratic. The general assembly has
the last word. But, when it comes to administer-
ing federations of unions, grouping thousands of
members, or managing wholesale stores, like
those of Hamburg, Manchester or Glasgow, they
have quickly renounced the primitive forms of
democracy, with nominations of managers for
short terms, and direct intervention of the gen-
eral assemblies in the smallest affairs. They
create permanent functionaries. To them they
delegate extended powers. These officials receive
guarantees for the future. Salaries are assured
them which make it possible to recruit an efficient
force. And thus, in the union sphere, as in the
co-operative or political sphere, is formed little
by little a personnel of technicians and managers,
who would be capable, if the need arose, of
stepping into the places of the present capitalists.

Moreover, if this substitution took place, thou-
sands of proletarian intellectuals today incorpo-

124 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

rated into the structure of private industry would
have every motive of private interest for joining
the new order.

Such a development, true, is still in its first
stages. Nothing would expose the workers to
more deceptions than to conceive an excessive
idea of their political and industrial capacity. But
it is the progressive acquirement of this capacity
that gives all their importance to the various
forms of labor organization. A new world is in
course of creation, on the edge of bourgeois
society and in opposition to it. It has its ethics,
its discipline, its juridical institutions, its con-
stitutional and civil rules. It constitutes, already,
an immense federation, co-operative, unionist,
political, whose closely-woven woof covers the
entire world. And, just as the bourgeois revo-
lution was not the application of an abstract doc-
trine, but the systematization of an organization
already pre-existing in fact, so the conquest of
power by the proletariat may be accompanied by
victorious strokes or triumphant elections, but it
will have as a preliminary condition, a condition
sine qua non, the pre-existence of an organization
capable of furnishing elements of direction and
management within the new system.

Briefly, the conquest of power, thus under-
Stood, ceases to be confused, either with the

PROLETARIAN ACTION 125

conquest of the parliamentary majority and the
government by electoral action alone, or with
the sudden seizure of the State by force. Before
the workers can become the directing class, they
must, having become through capitalistic evolu-
tion the great (or as the Communist Manifesto
says the immense) majority of the population,
add to their numerical power the power of organ-
ization, political and economic.

Now, that alone is enough to show how grossly
deceived are those who maintain, with Leroy-
Beaulieu, that socialism is statism, and that in a
socialist system the various associations, the
voluntary and free combinations would disappear,
absorbed by the all-powerful and all-providing
State.

Without the individual and collective "self-
help" of the working class, without a vast organic
development of the unions, of the co-operatives,
of association under all its forms, it is not even
possible to conceive of the seizure of political
power by the workers, and after that, how can
we believe that once masters of these powers, the
toilers, destroying their work, would consent, as
Leroy-Beaulieu predicts, to become once more
human dust, and to abdicate into the hands of
the police-State the power which by their free
effort they had conquered.

126 socialism versus the state

4. The Proletarian Conquest of
Political Power
It only remains to draw our conclusion.
What must we think of that schematic view of
the social revolution, which is found constantly
in Marx and Engels, from the Manifesto to the
"Civil War in France": conquest of political
power by the proletariat; collective dictatorship
of the proletariat; abolition of the State?

(a) Conquest 'of Political Poiver By
the Proletariat

It will be asked at the start whether the word
proletariat has not too restricted a meaning, and
if it is not better to say: conquest of political
power by the workers, manual or intellectual?

In its usual sense the term proletariat indicates
"people who are in indigence" (Hatzfeld and
Darmesteter). Now all workers are not indigent,
and at this point we must recognize that the
expression is liable to be misunderstood. But
this is not a question of terminology.

For Marx and Engels, the proletariat is "the
modern working-class, a class of laborers, who
live only so long as they find work, and who find
work only so long as their labor increases
capital."1

1 Communist Manifesto, page 21 Kerr edition.

PROLETARIAN ACTION 127

These laborers, assuredly, are not the only
laborers. But they are the only ones who have a
direct, immediate, personal interest in emancipat-
ing themselves from capitalist domination. The
intellectuals, the people of the liberal professions,
may have sympathy for the proletarian cause.
They may say that under a socialist system, as
well as today, their capacities would find employ-
ment. And in fact, it is hard to imagine how,
without the support, or at least the neutralization
of these elements, or of a part of these elements,
the proletariat can grasp the power of the State.
Nevertheless, the history of every socialist move-
ment— and even at the present hour, of Russia —
shows that the real motive power of the social
revolution, the class really agitating against capi-
talism, is certainly the working class. In view of
this, we see no sufficient reasons for modifying
the traditional terminology.

If it has been consecrated by usage, neither has
it ceased to be enlarged by practice, and the
affirmation of the proletarian, the labor character
of the social democracy has been no obstacle to
the recruiting of workers who are not, properly
speaking, proletarians or laborers.

(b) The Collective Dictatorship of
the Proletariat

Marx and Engels foresaw that at a given

128 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

moment — following, for example, an inter-
national war — the workers, carried into power
by events, will use this power to take away, little
by little, from the bourgeoisie, all its capital,
putting the means of production in the hands of
the State. They say this in the Manifesto.
Engels repeats it, in 1891, in the introduction to
the German translation of "The Civil War in
France" :

The State, he says, is neither more nor less than a
machine for the oppression of one class by another, and
that quite as much in a democratic republic as in a
monarchy; and the least to be said is that it is a
scourge which the proletariat inherits in its struggle
for class domination; but of which it must, as the Com-
mune did, and in the greatest measure possible, atten-
uate the most grievous effects, until the day when a
new generation, reared in a new society of free and
equal men, may rid itself of all governmental rubbish.
The German Philistines are always plunged into holy
terror at the words "dictatorship of the proletariat."
Would you know, gentlemen, what that dictatorship
means? Look at the Paris Commune. There is the
dictatorship of the proletariat.

Such indeed is, in substance, the idea com-
monly held in socialist circles of the social revo-
lution : a new Commune, this time victorious, no
longer at a single point, but in the principal
centers of the capitalist world.

Hypothesis ; but hypothesis with nothing im-
probable in it, in these times when it already
appears that the after-war period in a number of

PROLETARIAN ACTION 129

countries will bring class antagonisms and un-
heard-of social convulsions.

Only, if the defeat of the Paris Commune, not
to speak of the difficulties of the Russian Revo-
lution, proves anything, it is the impossibility of
ending the capitalist system as long as the pro-
letariat is not sufficiently prepared to exercise
the power which circumstances might let fall into
its hands.

Neither does Marx claim more. Witness this
celebrated passage from "The Civil War in
France" :

The working class did not expect miracles from the
Commune. They have no ready-made Utopias to intro-
duce by order of the people. They know that in order
to work out their own emanciptation, and along with
it that higher form to which present society is irre-
sistibly tending, by its own economical agencies, they
will have to pass through long struggles, through a
series of historic processes, transforming circumstances
and men.

Consequently what matters to the proletariat is
not to make prophecies, nor to discuss the
prophecies of others on the hypothesis of its col-
lective dictatorship, but to prepare itself, by the
development of its organization, economic and po-
litical, to dominate events, whatever may happen.

Meanwhile it should be noted that the more this
autonomous organization of the working class
develops, the more profoundly must the primitive

130 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

and elementary conception of the proletarian
dictatorship be modified.

As a matter of fact it seems undeniable that
Engels and Marx, at least in the Manifesto,
suppose that at a given moment the proletarians,
donning the boots of the police-state, will appro-
priate the coercive powers created by the bour-
geoisie, to govern against the bourgeoisie, that
they will, in a word, to make the social revolution,
utilize the instrument of rule forged by the
master class to make revolution impossible. Now,
with a proletariat powerfully organized, we may
admit that it would be far less a question of
utilizing the bourgeois State for other ends, than
of substituting for it a new State which is, from
now on, in process of formation in the great
trade-union, co-operative and political federations
of the working class.

That does not mean, assuredly, that nothing
ought to be preserved, even provisionally, of the
old state-machine. But, to speak frankly, we
have trouble in admitting that this instrument of
domination and oppression can, without essential
modifications, be used as a means of liberation
and enfranchisement. Engels moreover admits
this to a certain extent when he writes (see the
introduction quoted above) that in the example
of the Commune, the proletariat, heir to this

PROLETARIAN ACTION 131

scourge, ought, while awaiting its complete aboli-
tion, "to attenuate, as far as possible, its most
grievous effects."

(c) Abolition of the State

What is to be said?

If certain expressions are taken literally, it
seems that in speaking of the abolition of the
State, the Marxians foresee the passage, by a
mutation more or less abrupt, from the pro-
letarian dictatorship to anarchy, to the absence of
government.

But consider more closely.

As we have said, the State, as the term is used
by Marx and Engels, is not the State in the broad
sense, the State, organ of management, the State,
representing the general interests of society. It
is the State-power, the State, organ of authority,
the State, instrument of domination by one class
over another.

In "The Civil War in France," for example,
Marx opposes the "free federation of all men"
to the State as "national power of capital over
labor . . ., public force organized for social
enslavement . . ., engine of class despotism."

Likewise, in "Anti-Duehring," Engels tells us
that the State is the organization of the exploiting
class at every epoch with a view to maintaining
these exterior conditions of production, and

132 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

notably with a view to holding the exploited class
by force within the conditions of oppression re-
quired by the existing mode of production
(slavery, serfdom, wage-labor).

Once these definitions are admitted, the Marx-
ian syllogism is logically unassailable :

1. The State is the organ of the domination
of one class over another.

2. Now, socialism aims at the suppression of
classes by the socialization of the means of
production and exchange.

3. Thus socialism tends, by this very fact, to
abolish the State.

All would thus be for the best if the Marxian
sense of the word "State" did not differ from the
usual sense. But as it does differ, misunder-
standings and confusions may arise regarding the
abolition of the State, as understood by Marxians.

It is therefore important to be definite and to
say once more that if, in a socialist society, the
State, organ of authority, saw its functions re-
duced to the minimum, the State, organ of
administration, would continue to be the repre-
sentative of the general interests of the com-
munity.

This necessary distinction will moreover be
increasingly important, now that we are to dis-
cuss the socialization of the means of production.

PART TWO

The Socialization of the Means of

Production

Even before the present war, which in the
nature of things brought with it a prodigious
development of statism, one of the characteristics
of social evolution has been the considerable in-
crease of the functions and the domain of the
State. The old monopolies or fiscal domains,
which not long ago were thought to be about to
disappear — the tobacco monopoly in France for
example, or the fiscal lands in Prussia — are not
only preserved, but extended and developed.
National forests are bought or created. The rail-
roads are taken over. The rights of the nation
over water power are proclaimed. Monopolies
are established or projected in alcohol, as in
Switzerland, in potash or petroleum, as in Hun-
gary, not to speak of camphor, as in Japan, or
radium, as in the United States.

We have said that a number of socialists, and
also of adversaries of socialism, see in this prog-
ress of statisation so many partial victories for
collectivist ideas.

That is, to say the least, a manifest exaggera-

133

134 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

tion. The truth is that in "statizing" certain
industries, the governments as they existed before
the war were obeying certain very complex con-
siderations, of which some were military and
fiscal, others social in their nature.

It is beyond doubt, for example, that in the
larger countries, the State, in buying the railways,
or in keeping a heavy hand on the companies, as
in France, had in view especially the transporta-
tion of troops in case of war. It is no accident
that the only countries in which the railroads
remain wholly or almost wholly in private hands
are England and the United States. Both of
these countries, for various reasons, believed
themselves dispensed from seeing, in their iron
roads, means for attack or for defense.

But, independently of this direct influence,
modern militarism exerts an indirect action, still
more important, upon the development and
multiplication of State monopolies. From year
to year, up to the moment of the catastrophe, it
has demanded new expenditures. Along with
the burdens of the governments' social policy,
the burdens of the armed peace have increased
in such proportions, that the ordinary resources
of the public treasuries no longer sufficed.

In the six principal countries of Europe, for
example, the foreseen military expenditures, not

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 135

including those disguised in other budgets,
amounted to the following figures in 1883 and in
1912:

Total Military Expenditures of the Six Great European

Powers in 1883 and in 1912

(In millions of francs)

Increase between 1883 and 1912
Country 1883 1912 Millions Per Cent

Germany 504 1,648 1,144 227.0

England 702 1,779 1,077 153.4

Austria-Hungary.... 318 674 356 111.9

France 789 1,343 554 70.2

Italy 311 649 338 108.6

Russia 894 1,920 1,026 114.8

Totals 3,518 8,013 4,495 127.7

To find these billions, which the enormous in-
crease of public debts will multiply after the war,
by resorting to taxes alone, becomes irksome and
will become more and more irksome. Even be-
fore the war there were plans for fiscal monop-
olies. Those already existing were developed.
Thereby results an extension of the collective
domain, but it should be well understood that it
is difficult to see in this phenomenon a triumph
for socialist ideas.

Let us add however that, apart from the influ-
ences of a fiscal and military order, other factors
have intervened, and will intervene more and
more. It is not to secure revenue nor with a

136 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

view to preparing for war that the Belgian State
and the Swiss State have bought the railways,
that Switzerland wishes to nationalize insurance,
that hydraulic power is being socialized almost
everywhere, that national forestry is being ex-
tended, or that the Prussian State, which already
possesses some coal mines, is trying to acquire
more.

In proportion as the influence of socialism
increases, as the mass of consumers becomes
aware of the exploitation imposed by the capital-
istic monopolies, the governments must appeal to
other motives than fiscal ones for bringing new
industries within the State's sphere of action.

Thus for example in the French Chamber, on

November 19, 1909, the minister of finance, M.

Cochery, on the day following certain monster

meetings protesting against new taxes on alcohol,

organized by the retailers of liquor, supported

and encouraged by the big distillers, expressed

himself in these terms:

M. Cochery, Minister of Finance: I shall not follow
M. Guillemet into the parlors of the Tuileries, where he
wished to conduct us the other day, to show us the
splendor and luxury of a certain tobacco merchant, the
revelation of which has been enough to determine
Napoleon to establish the tobacco monopoly. I shall
remain far more modern. I shall confine myself, while
glancing over the altogether democratic meetings of
1909, to considering for a moment that formidable

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 137

money power, residing in certain manufacturers, that
they have revealed to us, and I shall merely say: the
problem of the alcohol monopoly, agitated for some
years in the past, studied with ardor, then fallen into
slumber, is re-awakened ; its examination will follow
shortly. (Lively applause on the left and extreme left.)
*******

And before long the other problem will perhaps be
raised; that of the consideration of the monopoly of
insurance or of certain forms of insurance. (Applause.)

M. Lasies : It is only the moderates who play radical
politics. However, I do not blame you for it.

The Minister of Finance: Monsieur Lasies, if the
moderates sometimes play radical politics, it is because
there are times when certain interests show in such a
striking fashion their influence over the life of this
country that men of good faith ask themselves whether
this role really belongs to private interests. (Applause
on the left and the extreme left.) 1

Even before the war it could be foreseen that
in the near future the French State, which drew
each year more than 300,000,000 francs from the
tobacco monopoly, which manufactured matches
(badly enough, by the way), which operated rail-
ways, made porcelains at Sevres and tapestries at
Gobelins, would also make itself an insurance
agent and a producer or rectifier of alcohol.

But, in France as elsewhere, this tendency to-
ward the statization of certain industries has been
counteracted, thus far, by active opposition based

1 Journal offlciel du 20 novembre 1910, Debats parlemen-
taires. p. 2794-2795.

138 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

on the disadvantages presented by State exploita-
tion in its present form.

Certainly, in this matter, we can not be too
distrustful of the deliberate exaggerations of
those who have a direct interest in saying the
worst possible things about the management of
public enterprises.

Too often, in fact, public opinion in this matter
is manufactured by a press whose "doctrinal pub-
licity," to use the neat phrase of a French deputy,
reflects with a systematic fidelity the opinion
of the capitalists who wish to preserve their
monopolies.

It will be remembered, for example, that the
London Times published, a few years ago, a
series of unsigned articles, emanating, it was
said, from an impartial observer, against the
municipal lighting systems in England. These
articles made the tour of Europe. They furnish,
even today, arguments for the opponents of
municipalization. Now, a short time after their
publication, it was learned that the "impartial ob-
server" was the general manager of one of the
big electric light and power companies of London.

In like manner we have seen a press campaign
against the Western State Railway of France,
very instructive for those who knew or guessed
what was behind it.

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 139

As always happens, the Western Company,
which had always been very badly managed,
began to be managed worse still when it saw the
government purchase coming. The rolling stock
was not renewed, the maintenance of the railways
was scandalously neglected. In short, when the
State had taken it over, it found itself confronted
with a situation such that any normal operation
became impossible. This occasioned numerous
accidents, chargeable, at least in part, to the vices
of the former system, but affording material for
so many propagandist indictments against opera-
tion by the State. When an accident took place
on the lines operated by the companies, it was
merely an incident; on the "West State" it be-
came an argument.

As for the explanation of this attitude of a
part of the press, it will be found, for lack of
more recent documents, in the parliamentary
inquiry made in 1895 by the French Chamber,
with the aim of studying the moral conditions of
the famous articles of agreement (between the
State and the railways) of 1883, so justly char-
acterized as nefarious.

In the course of the inquiry M. Carlier, gen-
eral secretary of the Orleans Company, explained
that the six great companies had, long before,
organized at their common expense a publicity

140 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

service for the defense of their interests, and on
the subject of the expenses incurred by this serv-
ice, he gave the following information :

The expense for the year 1880 was 520,000 francs for
the six companies. That for 1881 was only 400,000
francs or a trifle more. In 1882, it was much heavier;
that was the year of the campaign for government
purchase against which the companies were struggling;
the expense went up to 735,000 francs. The following
year it was slightly less, 718,000 francs.

After the signing of the articles, constituting a treaty
of peace, the expenditures diminished sharply; in 1884
they were still 450,000 francs, I believe, but in subse-
quent years the figures were much less.

*******

For the last three years, I must say, since the strike
of i8gi, we have new questions which pre-occupy us;
difficulties may arise on this field, over which the com-
panies, you understand, ought to be anxious.1

Is it surprising, after such confessions, that
certain great newspapers show themselves so dis-
tinctly hostile both to the demands of the railway
workers, and to the nationalization of the rail-
ways?

Nevertheless, after making allowance, and it
should be a very large allowance, for exaggera-
tions and falsehoods, the fact remains, at least in
countries where the industrial State is con-
founded with the Government-State, that the

1 V. Milhaud, Le Rachat des Chemins de fer, p. 22. Paris,
Comply. 1904.

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 141

present methods of operation of the public serv-
ices give ground for absolutely just criticism.

True, monopoly for monopoly, it may be pre-
ferable, despite everything, to substitute the
monopoly of the State for the monopoly of the
great capitalist companies. But there is at least
a germ of truth in the opinion of those who hold
that the state is a bad merchant and a bad manu-
facturer, and who consequently dread to see, as a
consequence of the progress of statization, the
development of a sluggish, routine-bound bu-
reaucracy; who rebel at the thought of seeing
their individual initiative weakened, and who see
a serious menace to liberty in the transformation
of an ever-growing number of citizens into
officials.

Only, we can not repeat often enough that it
is not the State, as constituted today, to which
the socialists would assign the collective pro-
prietorship of the means of production and
exchange.

In reality, all the misunderstandings that arise
on this subject, all the confusions that possess
people's minds proceed from the fact that the
word State — with a capital S — can be taken in
two very different senses.

If we consult, for example, Littre's dictionary,
we shall find the following definitions of the

142 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

State: (1) a body of people; (2) the government
of a country.

In the first sense — the body of the people — it
is true that the socialists advocate the appropria-
tion of the principal means of production by the
State, with this reservation, however, that certain
industries, notably the railways, tend to become
international, and that others, having a local char-
acter, belong within the municipal sphere.

In the second sense, on the contrary — the gov-
ernment of a country — it is absolutely incorrect
to say that the socialists wish to entrust the
operation of the principal industries to the Gov-
ernment-State. The function of a government,
in brief, is to govern, not to manage industrial
enterprises, and to entrust functions of an eco-
nomic order to a government is like placing a
police officer in control of a lighting plant, or
asking the commander of an army corps to busy
himself with posts, telegraphs and railroads.

Unhappily, today, when the State administers
an industry, it proceeds to a great extent in that
very way : the police State, the military State, is
not sufficiently distinct from the schoolmaster or
industrial State. Their fundamental characters
are the same. Their resources become inter-
mingled. Their directing bodies, finally, are re-
cruited according to the same rules.

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 143

When, for example, it is a question of choosing
a general manager for the State railways, they do
not summon a technician. It is a cabinet minister
who is being appointed. The real rulers choose
among men of political influence, among the
parliamentarians in view, an attorney, a debating
economist, and over night, they make of him the
employer, the responsible head of the greatest
industrial enterprise of the country.

Is it surprising, under these conditions, that the
operation of the State railways leaves something
to be desired? It is remarkable, on the contrary,
that oftener than not, thanks to the high quality
of its technical staff, it can, on a definite test,
sustain a comparison with the better operated of
the large companies.

But, in spite of the advantages which, at this
time, the public administration of railways pre-
sents, there should be no question (and on this
point we agree with Guesde) of extending this
system of exploitation to most industries, of
socializing the principal means of production and
exchange, without first realizing the two follow-
ing conditions :

1. The transformation of the present State,
organ of domination of one class over another,
into what Menger calls the People's Labor State,
by the proletarian conquest of political power.

144 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

2. The separation of the State, organ of
authority, and the State, organ of management,
or, to revive the expressions of Saint-Simon, the
separation of the government of men from the
administration of things.

Of these two preliminary conditions, the for-
mer— after what we have already said — requires
no extended comment.

So long, indeed, as the State remains what it
is today, that is to say the bourgeois State, the
capitalist State, the class State, founded on
force, with its military armament against the
enemy within and the enemy without, an arm-
ament as burdensome as it is formidable, any
increase in its domain threatens to re-appear as
an increase in the powers of oppression at the
disposal of the master class.

If the State, for example, operates the rail-
roads, the minister at the head of this public
service has under his orders an army of officials,
employees and laborers. If he treats them, from
certain points of view, in a more satisfactory
manner than do the private employers, — their
positions *are more permanent and their insurance
funds generally afford better protection, — on the
other hand he refuses them the right to strike,
bargains with them for the right of association,
forbids them to be active in politics, and strives

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 145

to exercise political pressure upon them at elec-
tion time.

On the other hand, as the receipts from the
public services are poured into the treasury of the
Government, it procures, thanks to them, con-
siderable resources, without being obliged to re-
sort to taxes, and very often it devotes the greater
part of these revenues to unproductive expendi-
ture for the army and navy.

Thus for example, in Prussia, in the budget
for 1909-1910, the net revenues for the properties
and enterprises of the State were estimated as
follows :

Administration of — Marks

Crown lands 17,500,000

Forests 57,980,000

Mines, Iron-works, Salt-works 18,830,000

Railroads 276,090,000

Total 370,400,000

More than 370 millions of marks, more than
four hundred million francs ($80,000,000), of
which the greater part served to build forts, to
buy cannon, to launch dreadnoughts, to pay
interest on a public debt incurred almost wholly
for war or preparation for war.

So no one need be surprised that, under these
conditions, the socialists of Prussia, and in a

146 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

general way the socialists of Germany, — I mean
those who have not surrendered to imperialism — ■
have always shown themselves far from en-
thusiastic for a fiscal collectivism, the develop-
ment of which would have served, above all, to
consolidate the personal power of the Kaiser
and to fatten the budgets of the army or the
navy.

They have already opposed the tobacco monop-
oly, proposed by Bismarck. They have not
desired the nationalization of the Reichsbank or
the statization of the grain trade. They have
always been on the side of the liberals to check
attempts which some wrongly imagine to be appli-
cations of the socialist idea.

True, this opposition to the State industries is
weakening or is altogether disappearing, in coun-
tries like Switzerland, France and Belgium,
where the personal power of a monarch does not
exist, where parliamentary control is more effec-
tive, and where labor has more political power
at its disposal.

But even in these countries, the positive advan-
tages of government operation, for the posts, the
telegraphs, the railroads for example, should not
make us forget their disadvantages. In any case,
no one can find it desirable that an unlimited
increase of the number of functionaries go on

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 147

increasing the powers and the influence of the
governments, which, however they may affect
democratic appearances, are none the less the
organs of the domination of one class over an-
other.

So it is only when the workers and no longer
the capitalists shall be the masters, when, once
more to use Menger's expressions, the State of
force shall have been replaced by the State of
labor, that the advantages of the extension of the
collective domain, at the expense of private
monopolies, will outweigh, completely and finally,
the disadvantages that are evident today.

But, if the conquest of political power by the
workers is one of the conditions preliminary to
the socialization of the means of production and
exchange, it is not the only one.

Even then, in fact, if the Government-State
should be in the hands of the workers, instead of
being in the hands of the capitalists, it would
remain none the less a government, which might,
like its predecessors, abuse the powers and the
resources assured to it by the exploitation of a
domain enormously increased.

That is why the other condition, sine qua non,
of the collective appropriation of the principal
means of labor is the separation of the Govern-
ment-State from the Industrial-State.

148 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

On the day, in fact, when that separation shall
be accomplished, and on that day only, it will
become possible to extend the sphere of action of
the State, organ of management, without by that
very fact increasing the powers of the State,
organ of authority. Furthermore, it would be-
come possible to restrict the powers of the State,
organ of authority, while extending the sphere of
action of the State, organ of management. And
if in our thought we prolong these two tendencies,
the ruling tendencies of the socialist movement,
to their final conclusions, we shall come to a social
system in which the functions of the State, organ
of authority, are reduced to the minimum, while
the functions of the State, organ of management,
are carried to the maximum.

That is what Frederick Engels meant when, in
his "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific," he de-
scribed, in these terms, the proletarian revolution :

"The proletariat seizes the public power, and
by means of this transforms the socialized means
of production, slipping from the hands of the
bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the
proletariat frees the means of production from
the character of capital they have thus far borne,
and gives their socialized character complete free-
dom to work itself out. Socialized production
upon a predetermined plan becomes thenceforth

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 149

possible. The development of production makes
the existence of different classes of society
thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as
anarchy in social production vanishes, the po-
litical authority of the State dies out. Man, at
last the master of his own form of social organ-
ization, becomes at the same time the lord over
Nature, his own master — free."

Certainly, we are still far from that final
liberation, and at this time when militarism and
the world-war menace the modern societies with
bankruptcy, we witness, on the contrary, a simul-
taneous development of the authoritarian and
the economic functions of the State.

But already, at the very least, three functions
tend to differentiate themselves, and more and
more, in proportion as the State industries and
monopolies become more numerous, there is an
attempt to increase their autonomy and to di-
minish their dependence upon the Government
proper.

From the moment, indeed, that the State and
the municipalities assume industrial functions of
some importance, it becomes, to use Milhaud's
expression, impossible to pour mechanically the
nationalized or municipalized enterprises into the
traditional molds of the municipal or national
administrations, shaped for other needs.

150 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

Between the State or the municipality, organs
of authority, and the State or the municipality,
organs of management, separation becomes neces-
sary, either giving a certain autonomy to the
industrial bureaux, or, to effect a more complete
separation, establishing public service corpora-
tions, which borrow their methods from private
industry, while preserving, in a manner more or
less complete, the rights of the commonwealth.

SECTION I. PUBLIC CORPORATIONS

It is perhaps in Belgium that one found before
the war the richest collection of those institutions
which, while they were emanations from the
State, had a personality clearly distinct from that
of the Government-State.

When Frere-Orban, on December 26, 1849,
offered his plan for establishing a national bank,
he gave it the character of a private corporation,
apart from requiring, in exchange for the priv-
ilege of issuing bank notes, the right for the
State to name the manager and to participate in
the profits. But a few years later, for the
municipal bank, and the savings and benefit asso-
ciation, he took the initiative of creating public
institutions, leaving no room for private interests,
but clearly distinct from the Government-State.

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 151

i. The Inter-Municipal Bank

In order to facilitate for the municipalities the
loans that they are often obliged to negotiate at
the time of undertaking any work of local utility,
the Government, at the suggestion of a socialist,
Haeck, encouraged the establishment of the
"Credit Communal," a corporation, having no
other stockholders than municipalities ; its articles
of organization were approved by the royal de-
cree of December 8, 1860.

In his report to the king, Frere-Orban denned

the character of this institution as follows:

To create a stock company, whose shares should be
owned by the municipalities exclusively, was at once to
limit in a just measure the risks to be run, and to
assure to the municipalities alone the profits that might
have been hoped for by a company of capitalists. Thus
is excluded the solidarity which, by pledging the re-
sponsibility of the municipality for interests not its
own, and pledging the municipalities each to the other,
would make them depart from the sphere of action
assigned them by law. And as for mutuality, the
guarantee that it gives is found to be replaced advan-
tageously by a social investment which, according to all
probabilities, will not exceed, for each loan, the amount
of an annuity.

According to the statutes, the "Credit Com-
munal" is administered by a committee of five
members, named and removable by the general
assembly. The Government reserves the right
to appoint a commissioner over the company. He

152 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

can oppose the execution of any measure which
might be contrary either to the law, or to the
statutes, or to the interests of the municipalities
or of the State.

It is interesting at this time to note that, among
the persons consulted by Frere-Orban for the
elaboration of this project, was the governor of
the National Bank, Bischofrsheim, whom we
find later among the initiators of another public
corporation, the National Interurban Railway
Company.

2. The Savings and Annuity Bank

Scarcely had the "Credit Communal" been
founded when Frere-Orban proposed the estab-
lishment of the other great public corporation
which remains, with the abolition of the octrois,
the most remarkable effort of his governmental
career, the General Savings and Annuity Bank
(1862-1865).

His attempt, however, met with active resist-
ance. He was reproached with wishing to cen-
tralize everything and create a new monopoly.
"From progress to progress," cried a deputy, M.
Julliot, "we shall all be enveloped in the nets of
the State, the individual will no longer exist in
our history, and our descendants will have to pay
an admittance fee to look at a free man."

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 153

Although the proposed charter gave a large
measure of autonomy to the bank, the opposition
took great pleasure in confounding it with the
State itself. They repeated ad nauseam that the
State was making itself a banker, that the State
made itself the direct debtor of the depositors,
that the Savings Bank was only a mask and a
fiction. And, as the author of the project replied
that, by the legal device of civil personification,
he gave the Savings Bank a distinct individuality,
one of his opponents, M. Denayer, exclaimed:
"But if this is so, you can erect into civil person-
alities all the wheels of the Government."

He did not realize how truly he was speaking.

The experience of the Credit Communal and
of the Savings Bank was not slow in showing,
in fact, that the system inaugurated by Frere-
Orban presented the greatest advantages and con-
ferred upon the artificial persons thus created an
autonomy which was neither a mask nor a
fiction.

Let us recall, for example, the fact that in
1900, that is to say at a time when the Belgian
government was putting the socialists, so to
speak, outside the common law, we see the direc-
tors of the Savings Bank granting to the Maison
du Peuple of Brussels, through the intermediary
of the union of the members of the Parti Ouvrier,

154 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

an advance of 1,200,000 francs for the construc-
tion of its central building. Now what the Sav-
ings Bank did, the State, the Government-State,
certainly would not have done.

3. The Inter-Urban Railway Company

The success of the two great creations of
Frere-Orban in the field of credit gave to the
Liberal government of 1884 the idea of applying
analogous formulas to the creation of a national
inter-urban railway company.

The principal initiative in the project was taken
by M. Bischoffsheim.

In a pamphlet published by him (1884) in
collaboration with M. Wellens, the governor of
the Belgian National Bank, he held that the one
way to avoid, once for all, in establishing the
secondary system, the disadvantages of the plan
of concessions to private companies and those
of direct operation by the Government-State, was
to create a national Interurban Railway Com-
pany, which should occupy a position analogous
to that of the "Credit Communal." He said :

Just as that society deals with the matter of municipal
loans, so the new company would have the mission of
centralizing all operations concerning interurban rail-
ways ; it would procure the capital necessary for their
construction and operation ; it will everywhere introduce
the principles of unity and of strict economy, and finally,

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 155

it will reserve to the municipalities, the provinces and
the State the profits from operation.

The establishment of a company under these condi-
tions, placed under the control of the authorities, dis-
misses all idea of stock-jobbing or speculation. Although
having the form of an industrial corporation, it will
not have its special character, that of representing pri-
vate interests.

In other words the Company, since the Government
itself has made it, will be concerned only for the
general interest, meanwhile preserving the advantages
of private companies, namely, of acting with more
rapidity, with more initiative, of examining projects
with complete independence, outside of local influences,
political or otherwise, and finally, by conforming better
to the necessities engendered by circumstances and
facts.

In the thought of its promoters, the interurban
railway company was therefore to be, like the
"Credit Communal," a corporation composed ex-
clusively of public officers.

The Parliament, on the contrary, while assur-
ing the preponderance of the collective interest,
thought it better to allow private persons to sub-
scribe a part of the shares.

The law of May 28, 1884, in fact, revised and
amended June 24, 1885, authorized the Govern-
ment to approve the charter, supplementary to
the law, of a company established at Brussels
under the name of National Interurban Railway
Company.

156 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

It is to this company that the interurban rail-
ways are conceded by royal decree.

Under the terms of the charter, the company's
capital, equal to the cost of the lines to be con-
structed, and eventually to that of their equip-
ment, is divided into as many series of shares as
there may be lines conceded. At least two thirds
of the shares of each series must be subscribed
by the State, the provinces and the municipalities.

In view of the further fact that by far the
greater part of the capital has been subscribed by
the State, the provinces and the municipalities,
we find ourselves confronting a stock company
made up almost exclusively of public officials
over whom the State keeps strict control.

The president of the council of administration
is appointed by the King to serve six years. The
other members of the council are named half by
the King and half by the general meeting of the
stockholders. The general manager is appointed
and may be removed by the King.

As a general rule, the company does not itself
operate the lines that it constructs, but leases
them to other companies, in which, oftener than
not, private interests predominate.

The tariffs are regulated by the national com-
pany, subject to the approval of the Government ;
nevertheless the Government has always the right

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 157

to raise rates or to forbid their being lowered.
The Government can enjoin the execution of any
measure which, in its view, would be contrary to
the law, to the charter of the company, or to
the interests of the State. Every year the Min-
ister of Public Works files with the Chamber of
Deputies the report of the administrative council
making known the condition of the company's
business.

It is generally admitted that the organization
created by the laws of 1884-1885 has given really
remarkable results, considering the rapidity and
the amplitude with which they have brought
about the increase of the railway lines and the
development of the socially-owned capital.

But, on the other hand, the policy adopted by
the national company has raised a sufficient num-
ber of criticisms, which have been developed by
M. Gheude, in his remarkable report presented
to the assembly of delegates of the permanent
deputations (May, 1909) (page 14) :

The company, he writes, has, especially in these last
fifteen years, favored private interests rather than the
public interest. It has given concessions for the opera-
tion of numerous lines without adjudication, has re-
nounced the forfeiture clause which restrained improper
exploitation, and has discouraged instead of promoting
the effort of municipalities to operate certain neighbor-
hood lines for themselves.

158 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

Moreover, instead of itself furnishing electric
power to the operating companies — which it had
begun to do with satisfactory results — we have
seen it abandon the course to which it had com-
mitted itself, and treat with private companies
for the purchase of the electric current.

These abdications to the profit of capitalist
interests are no less frequent, moreover, in the
State railways than in the inter-urban railways.
They result from a state of mind which dominates
all capitalist institutions. But, taking everything
into account, the fact remains that the National
Interurban Railway Company constitutes a very
happy application of the principle of necessary
separation between the government of the State
and the management of public enterprises.

Also we have seen, in these last years, this
formula extended to other fields.

In 1904, for example, Hector Denis proposed
to create a national coal mining company in the
north of Belgium, to develop certain coal deposits
of La Campine. This proposition was not wel-
comed, and the greater part of the new coal
fields was handed over to private capitalists.

But later, taking up another idea of Hector
Denis, the Government created an interurban
water company (1913) and a national company
for the building of low-priced dwellings (1914).

SOCIALIZATION OF MEANS OF PRODUCTION 159

The charters of these two companies are mod-
eled on that of the National Interurban Railway-
Company, and it is very probable that after the
war other companies of this sort will be organ-
ized, in various fields, to assist in national recon-
struction.

SECTION II. AUTONOMY OF PUBLIC
SERVICES

The question of the autonomy of public serv-
ices does not date from yesterday. Napoleon
once said, in speaking of the Bank of France : "I
wish it to be in the hands of the Government,
but not too much so."

And half a century later, when Frere-Orban
organized the "Credit Communal," the Savings
and Annuity Bank, and the trust companies for
the widows and orphans of state functionaries
and agents, he replied to those who would re-
proach him with desiring to centralize everything
in the hands of the Government by recognizing
in these institutions a distinct individuality, and
consequently an autonomy more or less extensive.

But it was naturally when the State, for
various reasons, was led to nationalize great
industries, such as the railroads and mines, and
when the municipalities in their turn multiplied

160 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

their direct enterprises, that the question opened
up in all its fullness.

At first the State merely created new ministers.
The national enterprises were erected into distinct
departments. It was attempted to give their
organization a flexibility greater than that of the
administrations of the Government-State. Then
a further step was taken, and in Prussia, for
example, for the mines, and in Switzerland,
Italy, France, for the railroads, the principle of
the autonomy of public services was proclaimed
and more or less radical consequences drawn
from it, from the triple view-point of finance, the
administrative organization and the rights of
those employed.

CHAPTER I

FINANCIAL AUTONOMY

So long as the confusion between the Govern-
ment-State and the management- State persists,
the public services have no budget distinct from
the general budget, and it is extremely difficult,
or even impossible, to take account of the real
financial position of the national enterprises, or,
mutatis mutandis, the municipal enterprises.

In Belgium, for example, it was long supposed
that the railways brought considerable profits to
the State. The minister Vanden Peereboom was
called the foster-father of the minister of finance.
M. Helleputte, one of his successors, said that the
railway system was "a veritable milch cow for
the Treasury." And on the strength of these
affirmations, the members of Parliament incess-
antly demanded lower tariffs for industry and
commerce, and higher wages for the employees.
But in his report on the railway budget for 1900
and in the following reports, M. Jules Renkin
undertook to put Parliament on its guard against
this optimism. He maintained that they had been
enthralled by an illusion, and that the situation

161

162 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

was far less brilliant than the system of account-
ing adopted by the Administration tended to make
one think.

Since 1906, moreover, new rules for account-
ing have been adopted for the railways, which
cling closer to reality. Now, by applying these
new formulas retroactively to the seventy-five
fiscal periods already closed, the Administration
has arrived at a figure of thirty million francs
for the total profit.

This does not at all mean thirty millions of net
profits, all charges deducted, and it seems, on
the whole, that the excess of receipts over ex-
penses just about suffices, in general, to liquidate
the interest charges for each fiscal period.

In other countries, especially Switzerland, at-
tempts have been made for a long time to put
an end to the confusion existing between the
State budgets and the railway budgets.

In his book "Les Methodes budgetaires d' une
Democratic," M. de Lichtervelde shows very
plainly that if strict unity in the budget seemed
most useful to assure clearness in the accounts
of the police-State of earlier days, it is no longer
justified in its primitive form, now that the State
has taken over new prerogatives, making itself
a manufacturer, educator, transporter.

Thus arises the distinction which tends to be

FINANCIAL AUTONOMY 163

made more and more between the general budget
and the supplementary budgets, specializing the
receipts and expenditures of the various enter-
prises that the State administers.

Thus Sweden, which already had a special
railway budget, separated from the general
budget in 1912 the posts, the telegraphs, the
public lands and the water power plants.

Just so in France, there exist eight supple-
mentary budgets: Mint, Savings Bank, National
Printing House, Legion of Honor, Naval Sick .
Benefit Bank, Central School of Arts and Crafts,
Consolidated Railways, State Railways. The
supplementary budget of telephones was sup-
pressed in 1906, but in 1910, M. Steeg introduced
a bill to re-establish it, urging the necessity for
the State-employer, to have, like any business
house, an exact account of its operations, so as
to be able to borrow, or to build up reserves.

It would be wrong, however, to consider these
supplementary budgets as models of their kind.
Even the accounting system of the railway
administration is unsatisfactory. "Nevertheless,
says M. Engelhardt,1 we have here an enterprise
whose receipts and expenditures are compared,
not as formerly in columns of statistics, but in

1 Engelhardt, L'Autonomie budgetaire des exploitations
industrielles de l'Etat, p. 58.

164 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

an operating account. Moreover, there is even
a plant account. Unfortunately there are com-
plaints regarding these two accounts." The
annual operating account may be criticised as too
often showing net profits that are fictitious ; ex-
penditures are carried to the plant account which
ought to be carried in the operating account. As
for the capital invested, it may be said that the
State does not know ; it is impossible to value it
by methods of accounting, and it can not even be
estimated accurately in documents independent
of the accounts.

It is not so with the Swiss federal railways.
Here we meet complete financial autonomy. The
Railway Administration has a property of its
own ; if it has not the right to contract directly
for loans, at least certain loans of the Confedera-
tion are set aside for the federal railways, which
bear the charges of interest and amortization.

Contrary to the practice in Prussia, where the
-railway administration, a fiscal instrument, pours
its profits into the national treasury, in Switzer-
land the administration keeps its profits, just as
it bears its losses, should these occur.

The accounts of the railroads, says Article 7 of the
federal law of October 15, 1897, shall be separated from
those of the other branches of the federal administra-
tion and kept in such a manner that the financial situa-
tion may be accurately determined at all times.

FINANCIAL AUTONOMY 165

The net profit of the federal railways is appropriated
first to the payment of interest and to the amortization
of the debt of the railways.

Twenty per cent of the remaining surplus shall be
paid into a special reserve fund, kept distinct from the
rest of the assets of the federal railways, until this fund
with its accumulated interest has reached the sum of
50,000,000 francs. The remaining eighty per cent of the
surplus must be used in the interest of the federal rail-
ways to improve and to alleviate the conditions of
transportation, and especially to reduce the passenger
and. freight rates and to extend the Swiss railway
system, particularly branch lines.

When the ordinary receipts with the unexpended cash
balance do not suffice to pay operating expenses, with
interest and amortization on the original capital, it is
permitted to draw from the reserve fund.

Under these conditions, the railway administra-
tion does not differ financially from a private
industrial enterprise except in the fact, quite to
its advantage, that having no capital stock, it pays
no dividends, and can apply all its profits to its
improvement.

Financial autonomy, however, which aims
chiefly at an accurate accounting system, and
serves especially to fix the responsibility of the
managers, would contribute but little to the
improvement of public services if administrative
autonomy were not realized along with it. The
most remarkable government railway system in
Europe, and we may even say the most remark-
able of all European railway systems is the

166 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

Prussian State Railway, which has not financial
autonomy, but is characterized by a notable de-
gree of administrative autonomy.

It would be manifestly superfluous to apply
the term financial autonomy, in speaking of
supplementary budgets in which the receipts and
expenditures of certain State enterprises are
specialized. If they have not administrative
autonomy at the same time, their book-keeping
individuality may be useful, in affording a more
exact accounting of the results of their operation ;
but they remain within the grasp of the Govern-
ment-State ; they do not control the profits that
they realize ; they may, in spite of their separate
book-keeping, be constrained by the Government
to operate in the interest of revenue, rather than
in the general interest.

CHAPTER II

ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY

From the moment when national industries
take on some importance, the differentiation be-
tween the authoritarian State and the employing
State quickly asserts itself.

Under penalty of being clearly inferior to
private enterprises, public enterprises must bor-
row their methods, must detach themselves from
the constraint of governmental traditions, must
free themselves from political interference, must
acquire a liberty of action unknown to the au-
thoritarian bureaucracies of other governmental
departments.

This liberty of action is more or less complete.
Administrative autonomy has various degrees.
But wherever there are State industries, the Gov-
ernment is, sooner or later, led, under the press-
ure of facts, to give them an individuality distinct
from that of the State properly so called, the
State as an organ of authority.

Such is the case, for example, with the admin-
istration of mines in Prussia and with most of the

167

168 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

State railways, in Europe as in South Africa and
Australia.

I. The Administration of Mines in Prussia
The mining industry of Sarre, which belongs
to the revenue, has a quite extended administra-
tive autonomy. The Directing Committee operat-
ing the mines belonging to the revenue, which
has charge of the commercial and administrative
management, exercises functions very similar to
those of the board of directors of a private com-
pany. The actual operation of the mines is
entrusted to engineers having very extended
powers, while subject to the authority of the
Directing Committee.

To enable the reader to appreciate such a
system, we can not do better than to quote the
opinion of a French engineer distinctly hostile to
the statization of coal mines, M. Weiss, who in a
pamphlet devoted to the operation of the fiscal
mines of Sarre, concludes in these terms:

Considered as a whole, the Administration of Mines
is endowed with a strong organization, which permits
it to compete in the industrial field with the best man-
aged private enterprises. We must say that in spite of
the habits of authority inherent in the race, in spite
of what may be called Prussian militarism, the Admin-
istration is highly decentralized; responsibilities are
well defined: a large initiative is left to the agents zvho
carry out orders. . . . The working force is well
disciplined and profoundly attached to the mine. It is

ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 169

through this solid organization that the Prussian State,
operating the largest mine field in the world, has
arrived at brilliant results, in spite of the difficulties
inherent in all State operation.

Let us hasten to add that, if the Administra-
tion of the Mines of Sarre may be cited as a
characteristic example of the tendency which
exists, even now, to differentiation between the
State, organ of authority and the State, organ of
management, we are as far as possible from
seeing in it a partial application of collectivist
ideas.

To begin with, the differentiation is far from
being complete. The products of the mine are
sold for the profit of the Government. The
exploitation has a clearly fiscal character. Its
essential aim is to provide resources for the
State, for its army and navy. Any other con-
sideration, such as the advantage of the public
or the improvement of conditions for its work-
men, is for it absolutely secondary. In the second
place, the laborers are still wage-workers, labor-
ing for the capitalist State, instead of laboring
for private capitalists. They have no participa-
tion in the management of the enterprise. They
are not even represented on the Directing Com-
mittee. They have not the right to organize,
much less to unite in one union. They complain

170 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

that they are not so well paid, and they are in
any case not so free as the workers in privately
owned industry, for example the workers of the
Rhenish-Westphalian Union.

2. The State Railways

There are few countries today where the
administration of state railways has not a certain
autonomy as regards the central government. An
admirable example of administrative decentral-
ization is given us by Prussia, with its railway
system subdivided into twenty-one local divisions,
each enjoying the same autonomy and the same
initiative as the local administrations of the
mines of Sarre, determining for themselves the
character of their material, going into the market
for the delivery of their locomotives, their cars
and their fuel, and deciding matters relating to
conditions of traffic and to claims, without re-
ferring them, otherwise than by way of informa-
tion, to the central Administration. But nowhere
else has such progress been made in this direction
as in Switzerland.

Here we meet, at the outset, the same decen-
tralization as in Prussia. The railway system is
divided into five districts. Over each district is
placed a directorate of three members, who
supervise its management, prepare its budget and

ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 171

make out its operating accounts, build extensions,
acquire property, dispensing with competitive
bids on amounts up to 100,000 francs, and regu-
late disputes as to the applications of tariffs and
the loss, damage or delay of shipments. Along
with each directorate there is a district council,
composed of fifteen to twenty members, nom-
inated by the cantons or sub-cantons of the dis-
trict, which passes on all credits outside of or in
excess of the budget, and which approves the
budgets, accounts and annual reports of the
directorate of the district.

But just as in Prussia the central administra-
tion of the railways is directly dependent upon
the Minister of Public Works, so in Switzerland,
the general direction of the system and the
responsibility for low-priced service belongs to a
special authority established by law ; the General
Directorate of the Federal Railways, which, on
principle, represents them as against third parties
in administrative and legal matters.

This directorate prepares the annual budget,
balances the general accounts and edits the report
of operations. It examines and executes new
undertakings, it prepares plans and acquires
operating material, it closes agreements with
other transport lines, makes out the time-tables,
elaborates the tariffs, regulates the services, con-

172 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

trols the receipts, supervises the district directo-
rates, the most important decisions of which it
ratines. It consists of a college of five members,
chosen for six years (their functions coincide
with those of the two houses of a legislature),
invested with an authority and a power which
place them above the Federal Council from which
they emanate. "The president of the General
Directorate," says M. Gariel,1 "is the real chief
of the federal railways."

A council of administration of which a ma-
jority of the members are elected by the cantons
and who represent especially the business element,
assists the general plans for buildings and ma-
chines, the maps of new lines, the propositions
for improvements in operation ; it approves con-
struction and delivery contracts in excess of
500,000 francs; it revises the budget plans, it
examines the accounts and the reports of opera-
tion, and transmits them to the Federal Council.
It also fixes the basic rules for figuring salaries,
and frames the charters of banks for the benefit
of railway employees.

That the autonomy of the federal railways is
a real thing, is shown by the conflicts which break

1 Gariel, La Centralisation (conomiquc en Suisse. Deuxi4m©
fascicule: Les Chemina de fer jediraux.

ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 173

out quite frequently between their manager and
the Federal Council.

As M. de Lichtervelde points out in his inter-
esting study, the Swiss railway administration
regards itself as an independent authority. When
it writes to the Federal Council, remarks a parlia-
mentarian who thinks it is going too far, it
speaks of "your" functionaries, quite as if it were
not itself composed of State officials. In men-
tioning the railway department and the federal
authorities, the report of the management desig-
nates them as "authorities of surveillance." In
1908 the Department of Railways was obliged to
threaten the federal railways — remember this
means the railways of the Swiss State — to make
them defer to the courts ; to the great scandal of
many parliamentarians, certain commissions were
very ill received by- the railway authorities; the
council of administration treated the remarks of
one commission, from the National Council, as
"unjust attacks"; they spoke of its "superficial
resolutions," of its inconceivable frivolity.

Let us add that this independent bearing does
not fail to appear excessive to many politicians.

Thus in 1908, at a moment when the situation
of the railroads seemed rather bad, causing gen-
eral irritation, parliamentary commissions were
appointed to inquire into the causes of the deficit.

174 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

The General Directorate was accused of compro-
mising the credit of the Confederation, and the
Federal Council frankly complained of being
despoiled.

Voicing these complaints, M. Secretan said

(December 8) at the National Council:

Your commission has arrived at the conclusion that
there is too great a tendency to make the General
Directorate and the Administration of the federal rail-
ways independent of the Federal Council; there has
been a failure to maintain between this Administration
and the Public Powers the necessary contact and the
indispensable subordination. With their General Direc-
torate, almost omnipotent, with their Council of Admin-
istration, which assumes toward the Federal Assembly
the air of a petty independent parliament, the federal
railways today constitute a State within the State, which
negotiates with the Federal Council, and endures with
difficulty any control by the Chambers. It is high time
that the Federal Council resume control of the whole
enterprise, that the General Directorate be immediately
subordinated to it, and that we eliminate from the
present organization the useless and even hurtful com-
plexities which exist in no other federal administration.1

It seems however that since then the criticisms
have become much milder. The Government is
indeed planning a revision of the law, but it seems
that the principal changes are to be rather in the
direction of simplifying the too complicated in-
terior administration of the railroads.

Moreover, the crisis through which these

1 De Lichtervelde, p. 142.

ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 175

passed in 1908 is over. The profits have un-
expectedly improved, and if certain persons still
think it might be useful to increase the super-
visory power of the Federal Council, it is certain
that the autonomy of the management has never
been seriously endangered.

It is moreover to this autonomy that non-
partisan observers, like Lichtervelde and Leener,1
attribute the satisfying results obtained during
these last years.

As they point out, the Swiss railways are
known and appreciated by innumerable travelers
who visit them each year. They take pleasure in
praising the regularity of the service and the
facilities offered the public. On the other hand,
a financial equilibrium seems to be established.

The balance sheet for 1910, writes M. Lichtervelde,
shows a considerable profit; that for 1911 is announced
under favorable auspices, and a profit of 7,000,000 francs
for 1912 is now expected. Better still, it has been
found possible to reduce expenses considerably. Thanks
to the accounting system used, the trouble has been
brought to light and the urgent need of a remedy has
been recognized by all. The General Directorate has
succeeded in reducing, from 1908 to 1910, the loco-
motive-mile cost by 5%, while the passenger-mileage
has increased by about 14% and the freight-mileage by
about 8%. It has succeeded in stopping short the
growing increase in the number of employees, in reduc-
ing the operating cost to 65.48% despite an increase in

1 De Leener, La Politique dcs Transports en Belgique, p. 65.

176 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

wages, and in diminishing the cost of track maintenance
by a better disposal of the force employed. All these
measures would have been impossible but for the
autonomy which removed the authorities responsible
for the railways from the pressure of job-hunting
politicians, for whom the suppression of a useless train
or a superfluous extension is a personal check and a
danger of non-re-election.

And M. de Leener adds :

We have had occasion to verify on the spot the
accuracy of the observations gathered by M. de Lichter-
velde. The whole administration of the federal rail-
ways is animated by the spirit which assures the success
of great industrial enterprises.

Let us add that all possible measures are taken
to reduce political interference to a minimum.
The Federal Council names only the five mem-
bers of the General Directorate and the twenty-
five members of the district directorates, and
these functionaries, again, are appointed for a
term of not less than six years. All other ap-
pointments are removed from political influence,
and are made on the principle of decentralization,
which in a general way governs the organization
of the enterprise: the personnel of the central
administration is named by the General Directo-
rate, and that of each district by the district
directorate. No appointment is made either by
the Council of Administration or by the district
councils; the Council of Administration presents
its candidates for the General Directorate, but

ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 177

the Federal Council is not obliged to ratify its
choice.

It is to be regretted that such examples do not
seem to have had much influence upon the de-
cisions of the special commission appointed in
1912 by the Belgian government "for the pur-
pose of studying under all its aspects the ques-
tion of autonomy for the State railways and
shipping, together with all related questions."

j. ' The Project of a National Railway
System in Belgium

In its report offered on December 2, 1913, in
which politicians and officials sat side by side
with manufacturers and technical experts, this
commission concluded in the clearest possible
terms in favor of autonomy.

It proposes, ia effect, that a responsible per-
sonality, the National State Railway Administra-
tion, be substituted for the Minister of Railways,
with a view to the conservation, the operation and
the extension of the State railways.

The National Administration would not be —
like for example the National Interurban Railway
Company — a corporation, the existence of the
latter presupposing the union of several stock-
holders, whereas in the present case, the State
alone is interested.

178 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

The law would create an organism of a special
kind, and would clothe it with civil personality
with regard to the various mandates that will
devolve upon it. Nevertheless, the National Rail-
way Administration would possess nothing of its
own. It would acquire, hold and alienate in the
name of and for the account of the State. It
would be, in fact, the agent of the State. The
duration of its existence would depend on the
legislator. It would be managed by a council of
administration and supervised by a board of
commissioners.

The members of the Council of Administration,
to the number of fifteen, should be appointed,
and if need be, removed by the King, at the
instance of the Ministers of Railways and of
Finance. They could not take part in the Parlia-
ment, nor fill positions with salaries paid by the
State.

The members of the board of commissioners,
to the number of seven, should be named by the
House of Representatives (four) and the Senate
(three). They might belong to the Parliament.

Under these conditions, the function of the
Minister of Railways becomes for the most part
supervisory. He remains strictly responsible for
the observation of the laws. His intervention is
required in all operations involving the resources

ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY 179

of the Treasury or the credit of the State. His
approval is necessary before the budgets can be
presented to Parliament.

As for the legislative Chambers, they con-
tinue, by adopting, rejecting or amending the
budgets and the accounts, to exercise their
sovereign activity. But, in fact, the Council of
Administration finds itself invested with great
freedom of action. It appoints the executive
staff, it determines the changes to be made in the
installations, including fixtures and rolling stock,
and in the time tables, tariffs and conditions of
transport, as well as in the organization of the
service.1

A superficial examination of the project permits
us to say that if it realizes financial autonomy (it
has merely copied the Swiss organization), it
offers a mere appearance of administrative au-
tonomy. It maintains all the centralization which
is the dominant vice of the present system ; far
from tending to the suppression of political inter-
ference, it re-enforces it. All the decisions, all
the appointments which today belong to the
minister are assigned, it is true, to the Council of
Administration, but all the members of this are
named by the minister. The political party,

1 See text of the project in the Bulletin du Comite" central
industriel, January, 1914.

180 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

which corrupts the present organization, will
function with more intensity and cynicism, since
the administrators, agents of the minister, will
no longer have to answer for their acts before
the Chamber.

So it is to be hoped that after the war, while
resisting the attempts of those who will propose
to turn over our railways to private capitalists,
Belgium will find a way to assure to them an
administrative autonomy which will not invite
such criticisms. That will be one of the most
important tasks of our national reconstruction.

CHAPTER III

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE

The third question which arises, when the
State, making itself a manufacturer, employs a
considerable working force, is to know whether,
from the point of view of freedom of association,
and especially freedom to join unions, these
laborers are to be treated like their comrades in
private industry, or are, on the contrary, to be
excluded from the common law and undergo, by
reason of their position as State agents, various
restrictions upon the ordinary liberties of citizens.

Almost everywhere, if not everywhere, at the
start, the governments have decided this question
in the restrictive sense. They have refused to
make any distinction between the State, organ of
authority, and the State, organ of management.
They have been unwilling to see in the workers
of their industrial or technical services, like the
posts, telegraphs and railways, anything but
officials like other officials, making up part of a
hierarchic organization, and unable to form
unions without subjecting themselves to the
penal laws which punish combinations of officials.

181

182 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

Thus, in the French Chamber, on November

17, 1891, M. Jules Roche, Minister of Commerce,

said:

I do not at all recognize the right of government
workers to organize under the trade union law, because
this law does not apply to them, since if they formed
themselves into a union, it would be against the national
representation itself that they would be organizing.
The trade union law has given laborers this liberty,
because, two private interests confronting each other,
that of the employers on one side, and that of the
laborers, on the other side, it was necessary to assign
to all interests the right to use their natural liberty to
further their own interests.

The employees of the State, for their part, do not
confront a private interest, but the general interest, the
highest of all: the interest of the State itself, repre-
sented by the public powers, by the Chamber and by the
Government; consequently if they could take advantage
of the trade union law, it would be against the nation
itself, against the general interest of the country, against
the national sovereignty that they would be organizing
their struggle.1

Such an argument, however, took too little
account of realities to have any chance to resist
for long the efforts of the State laborers to win
freedom of association and freedom to form
unions.

It was indeed possible by virtue of the common
law to prevent combinations of the officials of
the Government-State ; but to forbid laborers in

1 Barthou, L' Action syndicate, p. 137. Paris, Rousseau,
1904.

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 183

tobacco or match factories, metal-workers in the
arsenals, or even postmen and telegraphers to
form unions, was to create a formidable argument
against any extension, even when necessary, of
the economic functions of the State ; since on that
hypothesis, every passage from private exploita-
tion to State exploitation would have had for its
consequence a diminution of the liberties and the
fundamental rights of the working class.

So we soon saw, under the pressure of those
interested, who demanded energetically the same
rights for all laborers, public or private, the
application by jurists to this new phenomenon of
the classic distinction between acts of authority,
of public power, and acts of management.

"These last," said M. Laferriere, "are those
which the Administration accomplishes in its
character of manager and steward of public
services, and not as depositary of a portion of
sovereignty." 1

Now, from the point of view of the right of
association, of liberty to form unions, it seems
logical to treat in two different ways the agents
of authority, holding a portion of the public
power, and agents of management, having no
participation in the public power:

JCf. Paul Errera, Traite de Droit public Beige, 1909, p.
318 et seq.

184 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

If it is a question of the agents of authority, says
M. Maurice Bourguin, the relations existing between
them and the State are not contractual relations, they
are relations of sovereignty. It is impossible, conse-
quently, to recognize in the agents of authority the same
rights as in other citizens, notably the right to form
trade unions ; a union formed among agents of the
public powers, capable of checking or suspending the
exercise of sovereignty, would be incompatible with the
principles of public justice. . . . If it is a question
of agents of management having no participation in the
public powers, they find themselves bound to the State
by a veritable contract for the hiring of services. Their
relations with the State appear to me to be of the same
nature as those of a laborer or an ordinary employee
with his employer, and I perceive no precise reason in
the texts and general principles of law for refusing
them the ordinary right of citizens, the right to defend
their interests, face to face with their employer, the
State, by means of trade unions.1

This distinction, moreover, is today admitted
by every one, implicitly or explicitly. In the very
countries, like Belgium, where freedom of asso-
ciation is still subjected to restrictions that we
regard as unjustifiable, the Government recog-
nizes that these restrictions "should be more or
less extensive according to the services in ques-
tion," and that "all State employees are not offi-
cials in the restricted sense of the term." 2

But difficulties arise when it comes to marking

1 Bourguin, De l'Appication des Lois ouvrieres aux ouvriers
et employes de l'Etat. Conferences faites an mois de juin
1012, a l'Ecole professionelle superieure des Postes et
T61>5ffraphes.

' See Expose1 des motifs du projet de loi sur la liberty
dissociation des C. P. T. T., 14 mar 1910.

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 185

the precise point at which appointment to public
office begins and contract for the hire of services
ends. As M. Fontaine points out,3 there are be-
tween the public administrations and the clearly
industrial operations of the State, certain serv-
ices the character of which is contestable. Every-
one will agree that generals, magistrates and
prefects are officials, that workers in distilleries
or in match or tobacco factories operated by
the State are not, but one need only refer to
the ministerial bulletins or the records of
French jurisprudence to become convinced that
the intermediate cases — such for example as
employees of the revenue department, road-
workers, postal clerks or carriers — are ex-
tremely numerous.

On the other hand, even if it be admitted that
industrial workers employed by the State ought
to enjoy, as regards the right of association, a
greater liberty than officials properly so called, it
does not necessarily follow that they should be
accorded the same rights as the laborers of pri-
vate industry; the Administration, for example,
may under certain conditions require that permis-
sion be first obtained before organizing into
unions, or may refuse the right to strike, or even
go so far as to make striking a crime.

3 Louage du travail, Nos. 136 to 170.

186 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

This question of the right of association for
State workers is therefore a delicate and complex
one. General formulas may aid in solving it.
They do not relieve us from examining, for each
category of State employees, the applications that
must be made of the basic principle of the separa-
tion of the governmental State from the indus-
trial State, or, to use Saint-Simon's phrase, the
government of men from the administration of
things. But among these categories, there is one
which, in all countries, attracts particular atten-
tion, through the number of workers belonging
in it, and through the gravity of the consequences
which may result for the whole nation from the
exercise of freedom to form unions: that is the
category of communications and transportation
(telegraphers, telephone operators, postmen and
railroad workers).

In Belgium for example, it is with reference to
these workers exclusively that the Government
thought it necessary to draft a law, and while
awaiting the vote on it, to adopt special regulative
measures.

We have published elsewhere an account of a
criticism of these measures.1 We will confine
ourselves here to a few general observations.

1 E. Vandervelde, La Liberte syndicate et la personnel de
l'Etat en Belgique. Gand, Volksdrukkerij, 1913.

the autonomy of the working force 187

1. Belgium

When in 1881 the employees of the railroads,
posts and telegraphs attempted for the first time
to create a federation having for its aim the im-
provement of their condition and the defense of
their common interests, the Liberal minister
Sainctelette formally forbade them to associate
themselves. He based this prohibition on the
fact that "collective demands are prohibited as
incompatible with administrative discipline. It
is inadmissible, moreover, for agents of the State
to organize an instrument of pressure upon the
Government and the Chambers."

Later, in 1891 and 1892, new attempts having
developed, the minister Vanden Peereboom re-
newed the former prohibitions.

It required more than fifteen years before the
governmental ideas, under pressure from the
Parliament, were modified to a certain extent.
On February 5, 1908, on a question raised by the
Socialist deputy Anseele, the Chamber adopted
a resolution refusing State employees the right to
strike, but proclaiming that they "have the right
to associate themselves freely to the greatest
extent compatible with order and discipline."

As a result of this vote, the Government
proposed a law according, but with many re-
strictions, a legal status to the unions of State

188 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

employees, and, as a temporary measure, the
Minister of Railroads, Posts and Telegraphs
issued an order (March 9, 1910) on the right
of association of its employees.

This order, moreover, sanctions the principle
of the right of association, but only with restric-
tions and prohibitions which deprive it of almost
every possible application.

The employees may associate themselves, but
they must refrain from all political action, from
any attack on acts or decisions of the Administra-
tion, from any measure of such nature as to
obstruct the enforcement of orders, and from any
demonstration with a view to obtain, in favor of
administrative reforms, the support of persons
outside the Administration. On the other hand,
the Government claims the right to impose upon
the trade unions the obligation to split themselves
up into as many groups as there are distinct
specialties in a category of employees. For
example, the local and rural carriers, the carriers
on probation, and the postal clerks must form
three distinct associations. Moreover, the asso-
ciations must not federate. Finally, the em-
ployees must not attend, even as simple auditors,
at political meetings organized by outsiders, to
discuss the administrative situation of the State
employees.

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 189

Is it surprising that, under these conditions>
the railway and postal employees are not satis-
fied? They continue their effort to obtain real
freedom to form unions, and they invoke in sup-
port of their argument the example of most of
the countries of western Europe. As special
examples we cite France and England.

2. France

In France, as elsewhere, the Government re-
fused, for a long time, to agree that freedom of
association be granted to State employees, even
to those exercising no authority. It was not until
May 22, 1894, that, contrary to the advice of the
minister Casimir-Perier, who resigned, the Cham-
ber adopted the following resolution:

"Whereas, the law of 1884 on trade unions
applies to workmen and employees of State in-
dustries, as well as to those in private industry,
the Government is requested to respect it and to
facilitate its operation."

The result of this resolution is that the laborers
and employees of the industrial and commercial
enterprises of the State, the departments and the
municipalities have freedom to organize unions.

But, as a matter of fact, the Administration
and the courts have made rulings and rendered
decisions that are exceedingly variable on the

190 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

point of determining which are the State em-
ployees that ought to be regarded as workers in
industrial and commercial enterprises, and not
as officials excluded from the benefits of the law
of 1884.

Regarding particularly the employees of the
Department of Public Works, the following note
from M. Fontaine, manager of the Labor Office,
defines the situation which has resulted for the
different categories of workers:

The railway workers are organized in trade unions,
which have always figured in the successive editions of
the "Year Book of Unions," published by the Minister
of Labor : first, General Association of State Railway
Workers, founded in 1899, indicated in the edition of
1910-1911 as enrolling 3,225 members and publishing a
monthly journal; second, Federation of Mechanics,
Motormen and Conductors of the State Electric (rail-
ways), dating from 1906 and enrolling 3,370 members.

The French State seems to have made no opposition
to the organization of these unions.

As regards the postal and telegraph workers, the
question is altogether different. The French Govern-
ment has admitted the legality of unions of laborers,
but has contested that of the unions of employees or
clerks.

In the "Year Book of Unions" appear the Union of
Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Workers, established
in 1899, enrolling 5,750 members, and the Manual
Laborers' Union of Posts, Telegraph and Telephones,
established in 1905, enrolling 1,825 members.

On the contrary, the National Union of Postal, Tele-
graph and Telephone Employees does not figure in this
annual, its dissolution for illegality having been pro-

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 191

nounced July 29, 1906, by the Correctional Tribunal
of the Seine.

But the French Government has never refused to the
postal employees, as to all other employees in its service,
the right to form associations governed, not by the
trade union law, but by the law for incorporating
associations. The General Association of Postal Em-
ployees, thus constituted, has been allowed to present to
the Administration the grievances of the employees, just
as the laborers' union presented the demands of the
laborers.

There are thus in France two distinct systems,

that of the railway workers and laborers in the

postal service, who have the right to form trade

unions, and that of the clerks and carriers, who

have not that right, but who enjoy, to the fullest

extent, the right of association established by the

common law, under the statute of 1901.

3. England

The question does not arise in England, where
the railroads are operated by private capitalists,
except in the case of postal employees. It has
been decided, for the last six years, on the lines
of the most complete freedom of association.
The State employees not only have the right to
organize as they see fit for the defense of their
common interests, but their Trade Unions may,
if they wish, take part in political action : several
of them are on the list of the societies affiliated
with the Labour Party. On the other hand the

192 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

societies of this kind attached to the Postoffice
have, since 1906, been officially recognized by the
Government.

From a circular of the Postmaster General
dated April 14, 1910, (Official Recognition of
Postoffice Servants' Trade-Union), we quote as
follows :

The circular of the Postoffice, dated February 13, 1906,
announced that the Postmaster General was ready to
recognize any association or federation of postoffice
servants duly constituted, and that he was prepared to
receive representatives of the members or delegates of
these associations, or of their secretary (in the service
or otherwise) upon all matters relative either to the
general administration, or to the interests of the various
classes represented by the association. This recognition
was admitted by Mr. Buxton solely as an experiment.

The Postmaster General is happy to state that the
experiment of the four years just past justifies the
extension of the limits within which any recognized
association should be allowed to send representatives.

Desiring to learn whether the satisfaction of
the Postmaster General was shared by the em-
ployees under him, we addressed an inquiry to
the secretary of the Postmen's Federation, Mr.
Stuart, who answered as follows :

"1. Are the Postmen allowed to organize
freely?"

"Yes, entirely so. This right was legally
recognized many years ago, but has been prac-
tically conceded to them only since 1890. Unions

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 193

had already been organized before that time, but
their formation had been severely discouraged
and their leaders often victimized. In 1890, the
Postmaster General, the late Cecil Raikes, de-
clared: 'There is no regulation forbidding the
postmen to organize for the defense of their
interests and the redress of their grievances.' A
little later the regulations requiring that the au-
thorities be notified of the meetings of postmen,
and permitting the Postmaster General to be
represented at them, were abolished. Since then,
no attempt has been made to interfere with our
rights. In 1893, however, two postmen were
dismissed under pretext of breach of discipline,
but really on account of their union activity. But
these are the only cases that have occurred since
1890, and we have no reason to think that future
incidents of this kind are to be apprehended."

"2. Do the postmen's unions benefit from
common-law legislation ?"

"Practically, the answer is affirmative. Legally,
the question is doubtful. The law is not definitely
fixed on the point. In fact, the postmen's asso-
ciations have all the privileges of ordinary unions,
and one or two advantages that these do not
possess. Thus, for example, the postal unions do
not come under the so-called Osborne decision,

194 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

forbidding unions to appropriate funds for their
parliamentary representation."

"3. Can the postmen go on strike as freely as
the miners?"

"Legally, there is no difference. There have
been, moreover, one or two partial strikes of little
importance in the Postoffice. But a general strike
'is improbable, in view of the facility with which
•the leaders of the associations can approach the
Postmaster General and the other authorities of
the Postoffice."

4. Summary and Conclusions

There is evidently a world-wide difference be-
tween the freedom of association recognized for
State employees in England and even in France
■ — or in Switzerland, Holland and the Scandi-
navian countries — and the restrictive system of
liberty to unionize which still exists in Belgium.
The Belgian Government certainly recognizes in
principle the legitimacy and usefulness of the
trade unions of the C. P. T. T., but it claims
to reserve to itself the right to limit their field of
action and their recruiting field, to divide them
into as many groups as there are categories and
distinct specialties among the C. P. T. T., to
prevent the federation of the groups thus split
up, and to restrain their activity to the mere de-

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 195

fense of their trade interests in the strictest sense.

To justify these derogations of the common
law, it is said that if the so-called trade unions
of State employees came to include the most di-
verse categories of workers or even all the work-
ers connected with an administration of the State,
such a general association would no longer be a
trade union, since all the trades, all the positions,
would be confounded in it: "It would be noth-
ing more than a mob of the persons employed
by the administration, assembled with a view to
exercising by their numbers a pressure on the
members of Parliament and on the administra-
tive authority."

No one will deny this. But it is absurd to
suppose that on the day when State employees
come to enjoy the liberty to organize on the same
terms as the laborers in private industry, they
would make a use of that liberty which would
be the very negation of it. Is it not plain, in fact,
that if the letter carriers, the telegraphers, the
telephone workers and the railway workers, for
example, were merged in the same association,
they would put themselves, by that fact, into a
position where they would find it absolutely
impossible to defend their own professional
interests? As M. Paul-Boncour, former Min-
ister of Labor, observed very justly : "The closest

196 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

solidarity is that uniting those who work at the
same trade : that is expressed by the union ; what
interests us most is to protect the labor which
assure life to us: It is the union that permits
this."

Nothing then leads us to expect that, if the
State workers were free, they would mix into one
single association. What is true is that they
would put an end to the system of crumbling into
indefinitely small fractions which the Administra-
tion imposes on them today to make them power-
less. The postmen, for example, would reconsti-
tute their united organization. The laborers on
the roads and public works would perhaps form
a single association. And without doubt the
various trade unions of the C. P. T. T., or the
railroads, on the one hand, and of the P. T. T.
on the other, would join, for the defense of their
common interests, into a single federation.

But that is precisely what the Belgian govern-
ment fears. The "syndicalism of functionaries"
inspires it with a profound distrust. This is
nothing less than an attempt at substituting trade
associations for the Administration itself:

They would no longer be associations composed of
workers for the Administration ; they would be fractions
of the Administration. Their sum-total would consti-
tute the Administration itself. They would be "auton-
omous." This program might not be realized imme-

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 197

diately, but its partisans hope to realize it with the
briefest delay possible. These ideas do not exist, in
general, among our workers, except in a confused state.
Still it is necessary to point them out, for they have
been manifested, on certain occasions, by an interfer-
ence, direct although unreflecting, of certain associations
with the proper attributes of the Administration.

In other countries, the syndicalism of functionaries
constitutes a veritable doctrine which tends to "dis-
establish" the State, to give the postoffice department to
the postmen, telegraphy to the telegraphers, the navy to
the sailors, the railroads to the railroad men. The
public services would be treated like private industries,
or the trade would be organized for the profit of those
who work at it.

The functionaries, recruiting their numbers at their
own discretion, without the intervention of any authority,
would operate at their own pleasure the administrative
services, which would become the administrations of the
persons interested.

The Government would fail in all its duties if it did
not combat such doctrines. If one can imagine a system
where the laborers would be proprietors of the factory
— and all those who have tried to start co-operatives of
production know what enormous difficulties stand in the
way of applying this very seductive idea — it is contrary
to every conception of the State to turn over the Admin-
istration to the functionary, for here the function is not
created for the greatest profit of him who exercises it,
but solely for the service of the nation, in the general
interest.

The syndicalism of functionaries, as certain persons
understand it, reverses this conception, the only ad-
missible one, of the public function; no one can admit
it without desiring the ruin of the country.1

1 Projet de loi No. 121, p. 8.

198 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

As to this we have to say that if what is called
the "syndicalism of functionaries," although it is
really a question of the syndicalism of workers
who are not functionaries, had such aims and
tended to such consequences, the socialists would
not be the last to oppose it. We do not desire
the railroad for the railroad men or the postoffice
for the postmen, any more than the mine for the
miners or weaving for the weavers. To use a
phrase of M. Briand, we admit that the public
domain and machinery are "instituted for the
benefit of all, and not for the special use of those
to whom they are entrusted."1

Also there should be no question of allowing
the State workers to "operate at their own pleas-
ure" the railroads, the posts, the telegraphs or
the telephones. They should have, in our opinion,
the right to organize freely for the defense of
their common interests, but we do not propose to
sacrifice the general interests to these special
interests, and we repeat emphatically that the
manager of a national industry, if he found him-
self confronted with excessive demands, would
have not only the right but the duty to oppose

1 Chamber of Deputies, session of 1910, No. 126. Bill on
the status of railway employees, p. 5,

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 199

them energetically in the name of that general
interest.2

In short, the type toward which, in our view,
the organization of the socialized industries
should evolve, is not the "co-operative of produc-
tion," whose members, being associated only with
each other, are associated against every one else,
but the co-operative of consumption, in which the
final decision belongs not to the employees but
to the general assembly of the co-operators.

In the great co-operative which the railway
system is, or ought to be, for example, all the
citizens, consumers of transportation, are repre-
sented by the manager of the system, and he must
direct the enterprise, with the collaboration of the
workers, just as in our socialist co-operatives the
manager elected by the general assembly, and
holding his powers of management from it,
directs the enterprise with the collaboration of
the working force of laborers and employees.
But if, in either case, the directing power must
come from the consumers, from the collectivity,
then the collectivity or the consumers, of whom
the working force constitute a part, ought to be
model employers, and the first example which

2 Understand that we are here working on the hypothesis
of a democratic State, in which the rights of the workers in
national industries would be fully protected, without at-
tempting for the moment to forecast what might be a socialist
system of collective labor.

200 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

this collective employer should give to other
employers, is to recognize the full and complete
liberty of those whom it employs to associate
themselves for the defense of their common
interests.

True, the further objection is urged, that the
industry of the railroads — or of the posts, tele-
graphs or telephones — is not a mere industry
like the others, but is a "public service," the
interruption of which has the most serious
consequences for the community, and that for
this reason, nothing could be more dangerous
than to recognize for the workers employed in
these branches of industry the "right to organ-
ize," because the right to organize had for its
logical complement the "right to strike." It is
for this reason that in 1898, in the Belgian Cham-
ber, M. Bergerem, Minister of Justice, refused
to grant legal recognition to such trade unions as
might be organized among workers in public
industries: in his view, the trade union was un-
thinkable without the right to strike; now, con-
siderations of principle and of public interest are,
he held, are opposed to the recognition of such a
right for State employees.

This argument, moreover, is not admitted by
the present Government. In the discussions of
its proposed laws relating to associations organ-

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 201

ized among the employees of the C. P. T. T., it

declares the contrary :

The union, it says, has been regarded too exclusively
as a school for strikes. It is true that the strike can
not be made effective without an organization of the
laborers, but the latter may exist without producing the
former, and the trade union may, to the great profit of
the laborers, devote itself to a different mission from
that of preparing for or provoking conflict.

It is however beyond doubt that, if the Belgian
government refuses to its employees the freedom
to organize, if it imposes on their trade unions
the system of preliminary permission, if it takes
in their case all sorts of precautions of which
the effect, if not the intention, is to obstruct their
normal development, it is largely because it fears
that strong associations would be tempted to re-
sort some day to the strike, for securing the
triumph of their demands.

Moreover, we should not be expressing our
whole thought if we did not admit that, in fact,
freedom to organize has as its corollary the right
to resort to the strike. So we should oppose with
all our strength any laws of exception which
might tend, as regards the workers in socialized
industries, to erect the fact of striking into a
crime.

But does it follow that under the present
system of common law, the collectivity finds itself

202 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

without defense against State employees — rail-
road men or postmen for example — who might
try to abuse the fact of their being indispensable
to exercise, by concerted cessation from work, an
unjustifiable pressure on the government?

Here again, a comparison with the co-opera-
tives will help make our meaning clear. It may
happen and it does happen that conflicts arise
between the managers of a co-operative — even'
socialist — and the members of the working force.
These conflicts, indeed, are relatively rare. At-
tempts are made on both sides to prevent them,
or if they break out, to settle them, in a spirit of
broad conciliation. But if they persist, what is
the situation? The employees, who generally
belong to the union of their trade, go on strike.
That is their unquestioned right. Only, the man-
agers of the co-operative, backed by their general
assembly, have the right to fill the places of the
strikers, and naturally this means of defense is
more effective in proportion as the conditions of
employment are more favorable to the workers.

Now, what happens at present in our co-
operatives is an image of what happens, or would
happen, in a democratic State, remember we are
not saying in a Socialist State, in which the work-
ers in socialized industries would fully enjoy the
right of association and of combination. They

THE AUTONOMY OF THE WORKING FORCE 203

would, it is true, constitute a veritable power.
They would be in a position to obtain, through
the organization of labor, all reforms compatible
with good service and with the resources of the
community. They would cease to be as today the
servants of an authoritarian and despotic bu-
reaucracy. But if they yielded to the temptation
to abuse their strength, if after doing everything
to make the resort to a strike useless and unjusti-
fiable— by assuring its workers a legal status,
representation, an effective share in the manage-
ment— if the collectivity were obliged by them
to defend itself, nothing would be more legiti-
mate, and at the same time more effective than
to use against the strikers the right belonging to
the head of every enterprise : the right to employ
them no longer.

It would in fact be necessary to adopt syste-
matically the one-sidedness of certain syndicalists,
and be totally incapable of comprehending the
viewpoint of those "on the other side of the
fence," not to recognize that at a given moment
the responsible head of a public service, having
to defend the general interests of the community,
might stand disarmed before a strike of his em-
ployees. But, as M. Millerand points out, in his
report on Briand's proposed law against the right
to strike for workers in public services, it is not

204 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

necessary for that reason to attack the right to

organize, nor to make striking a crime.

Whatever may be, moreover, the penalties that
may be imagined, ... it is self-evident that
these penalties are always less serious than the civil
remedy with which the strikers may be punished,
namely dismissal. The administration of a railway
system, obliged to assure service to the public, re-
sponsible morally and financially for the manage-
ment, has, it scarcely need be said, the formal right
to dismiss any workers who have voluntarily left
their jobs. It may be merciful, when the hour
arrives to forget, but if the workers propose justly
to preserve their liberty of action, it can be only
on condition of assuming responsibility for what
they do.

We certainly should not agree with M. Mil-
lerand when he regards the State's use of its
legitimate defense against excessive or extrav-
agant demands as a punishment, a civil penalty.
We keep his words merely to show that the
recognition of the right of State workers to
strike does not leave the State disarmed against
combinations hostile to the general interest. But
need we add, in the conflicts which have arisen
for several years past, in France, in Holland, in
Italy and elsewhere, it was not the general inter-
est which caused them, but the interests of the
ruling classes, and we should decidedly have been
on the side of the strikers.

CHAPTER IV

SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES

From the mass Of facts which have been set
forth, the conclusion develops that the State-
employer is not everywhere the same thing, and
that, even now, under the pressure of the necessi-
ties of industrial management, the national or
municipal enterprises tend, more and more, to
differentiate themselves from the State, organ of
authority.

There is a wide interval, for example, between
the purely fiscal alcohol monopoly which existed
in Russia before the suppression of vodka, and
the organization, largely autonomous, of the fed-
eral railways in Switzerland. In both cases, cer-
tainly, we have to do with the capitalist State,
employing and exploiting wage-workers ; but in
Switzerland, as we have seen, its management is
concerned above all with the general interest ; in
Russia, on the contrary, the monopoly had no
other aim than to contribute for the ever growing
needs of the army and the navy.

This was explicitly stated in a speech delivered
before the Imperial Council, in January, 1914,

205

206 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

by Count de Witte, the originator of that

institution.

The monopoly, he declared, had been originally-
introduced to fight alcoholism; it was intended to
give the people a pure brandy and to regulate its
sale; at the same time the Government organized
anti-alcoholic district committees, charged to com-
bat drunkenness by propaganda through libraries,
Sunday-schools, theaters, etc. Now the monopoly
serves for an altogether different end, and its original
character is perverted; it is a gigantic pump, ad-
mirably planned, which sucks up all the resources of
the country; all the efforts of the Government tend
only to increase the intake of this pump, and the
vodka monopoly furnishes nearly half the resources
of our budget. Since the war began, the receipts
of the monopoly have increased by five hundred
million roubles, and today exceed a billion roubles.
Under these conditions, the anti-alcoholic com-
mittees are reduced to powerlessness, and any
struggle against the abuse of alcohol has become
impossible, since, from the fiscal point of view, the
Government can only congratulate itself on the
increase of the receipts of the monopoly.

It goes without saying that, under these con-
ditions, exploitation by the State is an unmixed
evil. Any one who is a socialist, or even a demo-
crat, must be hostile to it. Perhaps, in the old
empire of the Czars, we should have considered
that, all in all, the State railways presented more
advantages than disadvantages ; but as for fiscal
monopolies, we should certainly have agreed with
Guesde in admitting that such institutions, far

SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 207

from being advantageous to the workers, were a
formidable instrument for exploiting and op-
pressing them. Therefore, as he says in his
pamphlet on Public Services and Socialism:
"rather than to work for their extension, there is
reason to attack those which already exist, and
which constitute so many obstacles in the way of
proletarian organization and action."

But Guesde, as we have seen, goes further.
He generalizes his opposition to State industries.
He formulates it in absolute terms. He declares
that, within the structure of the present society,
"public services present, for the socialist party
and its objectives, nothing but dangers." He
admits only one attitude for the socialists toward
enterprises for the statization of monopolized
enterprises :

"The revolution first, that is to say, the political
and economic expropriation of the capitalist
class ; public services afterwards, because, after
the fusion of the classes into one only — that of
the producers — really public services will be
possible."

That is not, moreover, an isolated opinion. To
read the Communist Manifesto, it seems indeed
that Marx and Engels were equally of the opinion
that the statization of certain industries was ad-

208 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

missible only after the proletarian conquest of
power.

Kautsky likewise, in his little book "The Social
Revolution," without being as clear as Guesde in
this regard, seems also to defer to the morrow of
the revolution the nationalization or socialization
of the monopolized industries.

When there was talk in Prussia of the pur-
chase of the mines by the government, he devoted
several articles in the Neue Zeit to opposing such
propositions.

Nevertheless, neither in his writings nor in
those of Marx and Engels do we find that tren-
chant formula that we have quoted from Guesde :
"The revolution first, . . . the public serv-
ices afterwards."

If such a program of socialist action were to
be taken literally, it would be necessary, so long
as the proletariat is not in power, for its delegates
in the legislative assemblies to declare against
state ownership, even in the democratic countries
where the autonomy of the public services as
against the State-power is not an empty word.
And in fact, if practice has tempered this rigor
to some extent, there is nevertheless an unde-
niable tendency, in Guesde and those who follow
him, to be hostile to the extension of government
industries, within the present State.

SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 209

It will be remembered, for example, that, con-
trary to the opinion of the majority of the parlia-
mentary socialists, they opposed energetically the
redemption of the West State Railway.

We thus confront not a purely theoretical con-
troversy, but a divergence of views which shows
itself, and may show itself at any moment, in the
field of immediate action. Let us then sum up
the arguments which Guesde formerly used
against the "possibilists," and see what validity
they have, when invoked against the policy of
extension of the "public services" under their
present form.

Guesde maintained, it will be remembered :

/. That the nationalization of private indus-
tries by the capitalist State is not socialism, and
has nothing to do zvith socialism.

2. That far from simplifying the expropriat-
ing task of the proletariat, by already realising a
certain amount of public property, it presents
only dangers for the zvorkers, because it fortifies
the enemy, the capitalist class, and enfeebles
the working class, the movement of which it
paralyses.

On the first of these affirmations, we agree.
Even that one of all the State industries which
differs most from the type of police-State admin-
istrations, that of the federal railways of Switzer-

210 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

land, is much more nearly related to a great
capitalist corporation than to the co-operative
organization of production under a socialist
regime.

From the point of view of distribution, it is
founded on the wage system, save for the rule
of paying its laborers a little better wages than
those of private industry.

From the point of view of the organization of
labor, it differs not at all, or slightly, from capital-
ist enterprises ; the workers have no part in the
management ; they have no voice in the control ;
they are not represented in the general directo-
rate nor in the council of administration; and if
they are allowed the right to organize freely,
their unions have no more favorable position as
against the managers and directors of the admin-
istration than the unions of private industry have
as against the other employers.

But, it will doubtless be said, from the point
of view of property at least, the national railway
administration is collectivism, since the system
and the material belong to the "nation."

The truth is that they belong to the State, and
that this State is, despite its democratic forms, a
class State.

Now, as Guesde points out, "the private indus-
tries, when taken over by the present State, do

SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 211

not lose their character of capitalist property,
that is to say of property from which the working
class is excluded. From being the property of
such and such a capitalist, that is to say from
being property benefiting exclusively x or y, they
become property of the whole capitalist class,
without distinction of x, y or z. But that is all !
As for the proletarian collectivity, as for the
society of wage-workers, it profits no more from
statized machinery than from individualized
machinery." 1

We can not fail to note, however, that here
again certain affirmations if made too absolutely
might become incorrect. Between the capitalist
State, founded on the exclusive domination of
one class, and the proletarian State, aiming at
the abolition of classes, there are many inter-
mediate stages.

One could not refuse to see, without closing
his eyes to reality, that if the fiscal property of
the Prussian State or of the Empire of the late
Czar is a "property from which the working class
is excluded," the postal, telegraph and railway
systems in Switzerland and France, as well as
most municipal industries, can not be considered
purely and simply as "property of the whole
capitalist class." They certainly belong to a class

1 Socialisme et Services publics, p. 30.

212 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

State, but within that class State, or upon that
class State, the proletariat has an influence which
it does not possess in more backward countries.

Moreover these are, above all, questions of
definition.

It is not so with this other question, of vital
importance as regards socialist policy : the ques-
tion of determining whether the extension of
State industries is of a nature to facilitate, or
rather, on the contrary, to make more difficult
the transformation of capitalist property, state
or individual into social property.

According as one adopts, in fact, one or the
other of these contradictory opinions, one should
favor or oppose the statization of certain indus-
tries, railroads, mines, etc., while the structure of
present society remains. '

The socialists hostile to any statization under
the capitalist system raise two principal argu-
ments : on the one hand, the existence of the
public services fortifies the enemy, by diminish-
ing the liberties of the working class ; on the
other hand it increases directly the bourgeois
forces, because "the more industries the bour-
geois State includes, the more individuals it at-
taches to itself and interests in its preservation,
even including only those who, favored by better

SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 213

pay or a higher station, must fear any change as
a leap into the unknown."

That those are very strong arguments against
statization, no one denies. They are even so
strong that one must approve the social democ-
racy for being hostile to them in countries where
the State, the police-State, has remained what it
was at the epoch when Marx and Engels wrote
the Communist Manifesto. But these arguments
become less decisive in democratic countries
where the working class is no longer, politically,
a negligible quantity, and where the State, organ
of management, is differentiated more or less
completely from the State, organ of authority.

This enables us to understand that in France,
in Italy, in England, in Switzerland and in Bel-
gium, for example, the socialists or a majority of
the socialists are more favorable to the statization
(or the municipalization) of certain private in-
dustries.

Does this mean that they are ignorant of the
disadvantages or the dangers that statization may
offer? Not at all. No one denies, as a matter
of fact, that if the employees and laborers of the
State enjoy (from the point of view of security
of employment, for example) certain advantages
that the workers in private industry do not have,
these very advantages generally result in making

214 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

them more timorous, more pliable in their rela-
tions with the government, more inclined to
expect from favor, and not from their own effort,
any new improvements in their condition.

On the other hand, and for the same reasons,
their freedom to organize, in most countries, is
singularly limited. The authorities bargain with
them over the right of association ; they are
denied the right to strike ; they are called to the
colors, in case of a dispute, to compel them to
work; all the weight of the State-power hangs
over them.

Under these conditions* one may ask how it is
possible that, in spite of everything, most social-
ists continue to demand, even now, extensions of
the domain of the State.

To understand such an attitude, it must, first
of all, be kept in sight that if the State workers
are less free and less independent in their bearing
than the workers of private industry, or rather
than most of the workers of private industry,
that depends much more on the nature of their
work and the services that they render, than on
the fact that they have the State for an employer.

In France, for example, where the laborers of
the railway companies enjoy (as regards pensions
and stability of employment) the same advan-
tages as those of the State, we do not observe

SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 215

that they are more independent in their bearing.
It is rather the contrary that is true. And
in a general way, in all great enterprises whose
structure approaches, by its concentration and
bureaucratization, that of the State enterprises,
the psychology of the workers tends to be the
same.

On the other hand, when it is a question of
"public services," such as railroads, the capitalist
State, even when it is not at the same time the
employing State, resorts to the same methods
against the company workers who go on strike
as against its own workers.

In both cases they invoke the necessities of
public safety, and M. Briand, on occasion, ap-
plied military discipline to the workers of the
Northern Railway Company just as he did to
those of the Western State Railway.

From the view-point of disadvantages there-
fore, it seems that there would be no great differ-
ence between enterprises of the same nature,
according to whether they are operated by the
State or by capitalist companies. But, on the
other hand, (in democratic countries, be it under-
stood) the employees of the State have, for
improving their conditions of work and of living,
certain means of action that the workers of pri-
vate industry have not, at least not to the same

216 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

degree. Far more easily than the latter they
may, by their political action, obtain a minimum
wage, more complete insurance institutions, etc.
Let us hasten to add however that here again
the difference is not great, when we compare the
state industries with others like the coal and the
textile industry, the workers in which, very
numerous and concentrated in certain regions,
have at their disposal from this fact a consid-
erable political influence. But if, to be exact,
from the point of view of the workers, the
advantages and disadvantages of State exploita-
tion tend to balance each other, it is necessary to
take account of the following considerations in
favor of operation by the State :

1. Advantages which, in certain industries at
least, it presents from the point of view of the
general interest;

2. Transformations, ever more radical, which
can and must be accomplished, in the direction
of separation between the State, organ of au-
thority, and the State, organ of management.

Let us suppose, for example, that, the property
in the mines of Sarre remaining collective, the
Prussian State ceases to be a class State on which
the proletariat exercises no influence. Its insti-
tutions are democratized. The working class,
without being ready as yet to take political power,

SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 217

exercises an increasing pressure on the Govern-
ment.

Is it not evident that fundamental reforms
might be and ought to be introduced into the
organization of the industry?

1. The operation would cease to have a fiscal
character, and it would be the same with the
other public industries, except those adapted by
their nature to provide profits for the Treasury,
like the monopolies of alcohol and tobacco.

2. The industrial State ought, far more than
today, to have an organization quite apart from
the government-State ; centralization is one of the
characteristics of authority; decentralization is
one of the necessities of management.

3. Industrial managemnet would no longer
belong to functionaries delegated by the Govern-
ment, and having wage-workers under their
orders, but to the entire body of workers, organ-
ized into public corporations.

Certainly, before these radical transformations
will take effect or even can take effect, time and
efforts will be needed.

But from today the whole labor movement,
political as well as economic, tends to this final
result.

The war has interrupted this movement. It

218 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

will be resumed with greater force when the war
is over.

Already, in all the countries where universal
suffrage does not yet exist, the people are de-
manding it as the price of their sacrifices, and
are thus preparing for the conquest of the public
powers by the proletariat.

On the day after the war we shall witness a
powerful effort of the workers to take away from
the financial powers the monopolies to which the
war will have given birth ; and thus we shall
march toward the collective appropriation of the
principal means of production and exchange.

Industrial union activity, rendered more intense
by the after-war difficulties, will create, within
the entrails of bourgeois society, the organs of
the future society, the public corporations which
will operate the socialized industries of the
future.

Finally, the resumption of international rela-
tions among the workers, the development of
the society of nations, the formidable reaction
of peace against war, will tend progressively to
restrain the functions of the Government-State,
at the same time that the progress of collectivism
will multiply the functions of the industrial State.

Thus, little by little, through an immense addi-
tion of individual and collective efforts, the way

SOCIALISM AND STATE INDUSTRIES 219

is preparing for the passage from present society
to the new system, which a pioneer comrade,
Victor Considerant, described long ago in his
"Destinee sociale" :

"The States thus transformed will be nothing
but managing committees, named by associations
more or less numerous, and invested with the
confidence of those who have chosen them. There
is no more government having soldiers and police-
men under its orders ; there is no more despotism
nor usurpation possible, — something that nations
will always have to fear, so long as they are
obliged to manufacture sabres."

CHAPTER V

SOCIALISM AND STATISM

As we reach the close of this study, we believe
we have shown what differentiates statism from
socialism.

Statism is the organisation of social labor by
the State, by the Government. Socialism is the
organisation of social labor by the workers,
grouped in public associations.

Of these two systems, the realization of the
former would be conceivable without any essen-
tial change in the present relations between the
classes.

Thus in the industries or in the countries most
advanced in capitalist concentration, we see cap-
tains of industry or statesmen, whom no one
would suspect of any weakness for socialism,
admit that at a given moment the statization of
the principal industries is coming.

Read again, for example, the very interesting
interview with M. Kirdorf, president of the Coal
Syndicate, in "Rhin et Westphalie" of Huret.

As M. Kirdorf pleaded for the monopoly,
maintaining that it had to be organized under

220

SOCIALISM AND STATISM 221

penalty of ruin for the coal industry, his inter-
viewer suggested that an intermediate solution
remained possible ; the State, in view of the
alternative of monopoly or of the ruin of the
mining industry, putting its hands on the con-
cessions and operating them on its own account.
And M. Kirdorf replied :

That is just what it is trying to do! It already
possesses coal mines in the basin of the Saar and in
Silesia, and even rich potash mines. It thinks only
of buying new ones. M. Thyssen has sold to it in
our basin his concessions of Gladbach and Waltrop
which produce 800,000 to 900,000 tons, and in a few
years the Prussian State may be a part of the Syndi-
cate. Understand, its aim is, in the first place, to
make money, for the mines pay. But it is also
interested in controlling prices, and in using its
influence, if opportunity arises, to lower them, to the
government's advantage. It is thus that the Prussian
State, essentially conservative, puts itself into oppo-
sition to the national capitalism.

M. Kirdorf again states this tendency, seeming
to find it quite natural, but not approving it.
Others go farther.

At the time when Mr. Taft was President of

the United States, an editor of the Neue Freie

Presse, who had interviewed him on the question

of state industries, summarized his opinion as

follows :

He is convinced that, if limits are not set to the
trusts, the American tendency would everywhere
create complete monopolies, whose economic power

222 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

would inevitably be so prodigious that the acquisition
of the enterprises by the State, and consequently
socialism, would be the necessary result.1

Such prophecies, which the socialist press
reproduced with a little too much complaisance,
count for much in the strange idea that many-
people, otherwise well intentioned, construct for
themselves of what the socialist regime would be.

It is indeed evident that if socialism were
merely the taking over by the State, under its
present form, of the monopolized industries, such
a system would have for the very condition of
its existence a formidable concentration of gov-
ernmental power.

In a lecture at Sion College, February 4, 1914,

on the "principal currents of contemporary

thought," the Dean of St. Pauls, the Rev. Mr.

Inge, said :

Socialism may be conceived as an omnipotent
bureaucracy, directed by a small number of capable
men, of the type of Napoleon or Pierpont Morgan;
and such men are accustomed to high pay for their
services. A socialist government might be powerful
and prosperous, but it would have to rule with a
rod of iron.

Is it necessary to repeat that if this were
socialism, it would have no more energetic oppo-
nents than the socialists themselves?

iHugo Muensterberg, Neue Frele Presse, November 19,
1911.

SOCIALISM AND STATISM 223

Statism thus generalized would maintain the
wage system, would maintain the authority of
the employer, would maintain the relations of
subordination existing between the ruling class
and the working class.

Socialism, on the contrary, implies a radical,
essential change in these relations.

It is not a question of replacing private capital-
ism by State capitalism, but private capitalism
and State capitalism by the co-operation of the
workers, masters of the means of production and
exchange. And such a transformation, which
suppresses the distinction between capitalists and
workers, is nothing less than a revolution.

This revolution, the social revolution, which
the Manifesto compares to a geological upheaval,
to a rising of the lower strata of society, over-
throwing all the present legal and political super-
structures, may be sudden or slow, may take the
classic forms of previous revolutions or, which
is more probable, may decompose itself into a
long series of partial struggles, more or less
bitter, more or less violent ; but on any hypothesis,
the day when this shall be accomplished, there
will no longer be anything in common between
the capitalist State, instrument of the rule of
the possessing classes, and the new State, the

224 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

socialist State, organ of management of the
common interests.

Today, the State is above all a power of
coercion, of domination, exercising incidentally
certain economic or social attributes. In a social-
ist regime, on the contrary, these attributes would
become the principal part of its activity. It
would cease to dominate the workers. It would
emanate directly from them. It would become
theirs. It would answer to this famous definition
of St.-Simon :

"The aim of the French State is to realize the
well-being of its members, by peaceful works of
real utility."

This passage from the bourgeois State, tran-
scendent, to the socialist State, immanent, has
nowhere been better grasped and defined than
by Anatole France, in a well-known passage of
"Monsieur Bergeret a Paris":

"'What is the State?' asked M. Bergeret of
his daughter, whose comprehensive scholarship
has marvelously assimilated the quintessence of
socialist thought.

"Mile. Bergeret quickly replied :

" 'The State, Father, is a woeful, ungracious
man seated behind a little window. You under-
stand that we are not anxious to rob ourselves
for him.'

SOCIALISM AND STATISM 225

" 'I understand,' answered M. Bergeret, smil-
ing. 'I am always inclined to understand, and I
have wasted precious energies at it. I discover
at last that there is great force in not under-
standing. Sometimes that enables one to conquer
the world. If Napoleon had been as intelligent
as Spinoza, he would have written four volumes
in a garret. I understand. But this ungracious
and woeful man seated behind a little window, —
you entrust your letters to him, Pauline, that you
would not entrust to the Tricoche Agency. He
manages part of your property, and not the
smallest nor the least valuable part. His face
looks morose to you. But when he is everything,
he will no longer be anything. Or rather, he
will be nothing but ourselves. Annihilated by his
universality, he will cease to appear meddlesome.
One is no longer bad, my daughter, when one is
no longer anybody. The unpleasant thing about
him today is that he goes about scraping and
filing, biting little out of the fat and much out of
the lean. That makes him unendurable. He is
greedy. He has needs. In my republic, he will
be without desires, like the gods. He will have
everything and he will have nothing. We shall
not feel him, since he will be shaped to us,
indistinct from us. He will be as if he were not.
And when you think that I am sacrificing indi-

226 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

viduals to the State, life to an abstraction, it is
on the contrary the abstraction that I am sub-
ordinating to reality ; I am suppressing the State
by identifying it with all social activity.' "

We find in these lines, so admirably con-
densed, the very thought of Marx and Engels.

In the economic order, as in the political order,
and, in a general way, in all spheres of collective
life, socialism is not pro-state, but anti-state. It
strives to bring about the separation of the State
from labor, as from religion and from the family.
It desires, as the final term of this triple evolu-
tion, the State-power, the State as organ of
authority, to be reduced, if not to nothing, at
least to secondary functions of supervision and
police. Family life escapes from its control. The
churches are no more than free associations
grouping citizens according to their philosophic
or religious affinities. The great co-operative of
social labor, arrived at the fullness of its au-
tonomy, administers itself, free from all govern-
mental interference.

The realization of this ideal may be more or
less complete and more or less near. But, under
penalty of dangerous deviations, the proletariat
must be penetrated with it.

We have put ourselves on guard against the
excesses of a sterile doctrinalism, which would

SOCIALISM AND STATISM 227

make us reject any State intervention, any resort
to the State, even to prepare for discarding it.

We should guard ourselves far more against
the contrary tendency, which would see in the
extension of State functions, in the grasp of the
Government upon the principal industries, the
final form and the triumph of socialism.

In an interesting letter which Marx wrote
in 1873, to oppose the ideas of Bakunin, he
ridiculed with reason those anti-statists who, for
fear of consolidating the bourgeois State, avoid
all practical activity : to limit the hours of labor
is compromising with the exploiters ; to strike
for higher wages is to recognize the wage system ;
to demand that the State, whose progress rests on
the exploitation of the working class, should fur-
nish elementary education to the children of
laborers or appoint factory inspectors, is to
fortify it instead of dissolving and destroying it.

But it is not against such dangers that warnings
are needed today. The socialists are in the midst
of political and social activity. They act on the
State to constrain it to enact reforms. They are
demanding, even now, extensions of its domain.
They are striving to conquer it, to turn its
coercive force against capitalism. The all-
important thing is that this action for the con-
quest or for the utilisation of the State does not

228 SOCIALISM VERSUS THE STATE

prevent the struggle against the State, in so far
as it is an organ of class rule.

It is not enough to say that it shall be abolished
after being conquered, it is necessary to prepare
for that abolition, in all spheres of social life,
striving to realize, as against it, the autonomy,
ever more complete, of individuals or collectivi-
ties.

Let the workers, to improve their condition,
accept or demand from the bourgeois State a
minimum of protection. Let them prefer to
capitalist monopolies the State industries, which
take account, at least to a certain extent, of the
general interest. Let them strive to maintain,
after the war, the control that will have been
established over the principal branches of pro-
duction and exchange. We are with them. We
admit all the value of these necessary reforms.
But it is impossible to repeat often enough, at
the moment when, everywhere, the progress of
statism during the war is represented as a partial
realization of collectivism, — that these reforms,
to be demanded above all by the socialists, are
not, properly speaking, socialism.

They may open the way to it. They may be
the preparation and the preliminary condition of
the system of the future. But they might, if
we do not take care, result in a disastrous lessen-

SOCIALISM AND STATISM 229

ing of the liberties of the individual, by a formid-
able development of the State-power, still in the
hands of the master classes.

So we should never forget that, even if the
principal industries came to be incorporated in
the collective domain, the system of the future
would still have to be created by the transforma-
tion of the State, and that this system can only
be created by a militant proletariat, penetrated to
the marrow with the injustice of present social
conditions, and resolved to conquer, by main
force, well-being and liberty.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

Los Angeles

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

•78

PSD 2338 9/77

«.

V

3 1158 00303 6026

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

AA 000 397 578

SOUTHERN BRANCH,

•UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

LIBRARY,

U-OS ANGELES, CALIF.